


Made in Heaven, Forged by Hell

by wictorious



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst and Humor, Claire and Leon - friends to conflicted romance interests, Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Ada Wong, Minor Leon S. Kennedy/Ada Wong, On the Run, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon, RE2 Remake Canon, RE: Code Veronica doesn't happen, Sick Character, Slow Burn, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2019-10-19 20:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17608220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wictorious/pseuds/wictorious
Summary: One of them, spurned by a woman he thought he could trust. Another one's brother vanished for Europe without saying good-bye. The last one coping with the loss of her mother and the revelation that her father was a mass murderer and a monster.Leon, Claire, and Sherry start their journey down the long road ahead and try to find out if it's still possible for them to return to the normal life they knew before Raccoon City.Continuation of canon, taking place where Resident Evil 2 Remake's TRUE ENDING left off.





	1. The First Steps

When they'd safely made it out of the city limits of Raccoon, the sun had just started rising, bringing with it a new day. A few vehicles had passed by, cautiously veering ever away from the grime-covered duo.

Claire was a little pissed off, considering everything they had been through and had even tried to flag down a ride against Leon's wishes, not only to warn them, but to get a lift for Leon since his arm had started to bother him again.

Leon had told her not to worry about it-- they looked like zombies themselves at this point.

“We need to get you some medical attention, you're going to get an infection.” Claire gave Leon a once-over, an hour later, one hand on her hip with a concerned look plastered on her face. The three of them had taken a rest and settled by a clearing off the road where old wooden fence posts lay in high overgrown grass in various shapes of decay. Leon sat, his back against one of the sturdier posts while he ruffled through what medical supplies he had left in his pack with his good arm.

Sherry hunkered down beside him, gazing at the bullet hole in his shoulder.

“What happened?” She asked, her voice small, as if she knew it was going to end with a bad answer.

 _Your crazy mom shot me_ , he thought. But he didn't have the heart to tell her the specifics. Claire had filled him in on who the child was soon after their daring escape and he wondered just how much Sherry knew about what they had done.

“Someone tried to hurt a friend of mine. I jumped in the way so that wouldn't happen.” He tried to offer a slight smile, as if to prove he had done the right thing and that everything would be okay.

Sherry winced a bit, none the less. “I'm sorry. Is your friend okay? Did they make it out?”

Leon didn't have an easy answer. Ada wasn't a subject he was ready to talk about yet, mostly because he was still conflicted about how he felt about her and what he'd been through the previous night. He felt his gut twist at the thought of her betrayal and how he'd really believed she had been a federal agent. And yet, his chest still felt warm at the memory of her kiss and how she had saved his life, not once, but three times.

“I don't know," Leon could only reply. Sherry looked like she understood what that probably meant. The air was solemn for a moment until Leon glanced down at his pack. The kid looked like she'd heard enough bad news to last a lifetime. Leon awkwardly focused back on digging through his supplies when his hand started to feel weak and tingly. “Hey, Sherry, you think you could help me out? There's a roll of gauze somewhere in here. My hand's a little shaky; mine lending me one of yours?”

She nodded ambitiously and got to work, making sure to rummage around with care. With Sherry distracted, Leon turned over to Claire and caught sight of her rubbing sweat from her forehead in the now high-hanging, sweltering sunlight. He was pretty amazed that she'd been able to escape with minimal injuries. Her body looked tired and dirty, but she had no gaping wounds or gnarly bruises he could see in plain sight.

He wondered what sort of creatures she'd come across and remembered his brief scuffle and chase by the giant alligator in the sewer. No way there were two of those things hanging around Raccoon.

The two of them would have to talk about their separate ways and all of the horrors they'd encountered personally. Leon was eager to hear things from her side, to piece together the big picture. Especially how she ended up caring for the daughter of the very people who had caused the catastrophic outbreak.

“I've been down this way before,” Claire broke the silence, moving away from the road and back over to the other two. She stopped for a second to tap one of her boots toe first on the ground, trying to loosen rocks and dirt from the sole of her sore foot that had managed to sneak in over the course of the night. “When I visited Chris last Thanksgiving? I'm pretty sure there's a motel not too far from here. Hopefully it's still up and running. God, what I'd give right now to have a hot shower, a soft bed, and a greasy cheeseburger.”

“I want a cheeseburger too!” Sherry chimed in with a wide, toothy smile. “No pickles though. Or mustard. It's too spicy.”

“Brave kid like you faces monsters, no sweat, but you don't have the stomach for pickles and mustard?” Claire laughed and rested her hand on top of Sherry's messy blonde head. “Well, fine. I'll just steal 'em off you. I, for one, _love_ pickles. The zestier, the better.”

While the two girls chatted away about food and their future plans, Leon unstrapped his vest from his torso and tossed the heavy, ripped Kevlar aside. It was covered in a plethora of sewage, stained in his own blood, splattered with zombie guts, and powdered in smoke and ash from the explosion in the railway tunnel. He looked down at his uniform, remembering how it had been a deep navy blue at the beginning of the night. Marvin's pained face also flashed in his head; their introduction replaying and Leon realizing how he'd been too optimistic and pushy with the dying Lieutenant. Poor Marvin died alone and Leon had been powerless to return the favor of having his life saved.

He eased his battered body out of the worn and soiled uniform, unbuttoning it and leaving it aside with the discarded vest, until only his sweat-stained, white-turned-light brown undershirt remained. Ada had apparently ripped the long-sleeves off of it to use for dressing his wound when Annette had shot him.

The cotton weave had done a good enough job for most of the night, helping to clot the hole and stave off the bleeding while he battled with William Birkin's horrifying mutations and the murderous giant in the black trench coat.

"Found it, Leon!" Sherry exclaimed, handing the tiny roll over to Leon and standing up, proud. "Anything else I can do to help?"

"Yeah, here," Leon grabbed the radio on his hip and unhooked it from his shoulder reciever. He held it out to Sherry. "The chances of anyone still being in range of this might be pretty darn low, but if you want to see if you can reach anyone, be my guest. Just press that button there to broadcast and use the dial to change frequencies."

"Whoa," Sherry mused, holding it up to her ear. There was only dead air. She started to mess with the settings, trying different channels. "What if someone's there? What should I say?"

"Tell them we need a ride and we have one injured in need of treatment," Leon briefed her. He paused for a moment. "Don't say anything about Raccoon yet. They might get the wrong idea. Understand?"

Sherry nodded and wandered off to try out the radio. Claire kept an eye on the road, hoping for another shot at finding a ride.

Leon unraveled the dressing from his shoulder with uncooperative fingers and he felt dry, scabbed over blood rip away with the fabric. He sucked in air hard between his teeth, fighting back tears of pain. It had gotten worse in the hours since it had first been treated. He should've changed the bandages earlier... but Ada had been in danger and he hadn't had the time.

“Leon!” Claire gasped, putting her light-hearted conversation on hold to rush to the rookie cop's side. She knelt down beside him and put her hands on his, pulling them away from the bullet wound. “Slow down there! Why don't you take it easy for a second and let me do that for you.”

“Claire, it's fine. You don't have to--” Leon felt like he was burdening them and wanted to prove he could push through it.

“Yeah, I know,” she stubbornly assured him, looking down at his meager array of medical supplies while wiping her hands off as best as she could on the sides of her jeans. She took over where he'd left off and slowly peeled back the shredded shirt material, trying to be gentle as she did it. She looked over at his face, gauging if she was doing a good job but she caught him biting his lip. “Oh boy. This isn't good. I hate to tell you this but I think it's already started to get infected. Did it go through?”

"I don't know. I don't feel the bullet in there." Leon hissed in pain once more, the rusty feeling of old blood sharp against the edges of the bullethole.

She put a gentle hand on his other shoulder and coaxed him to move forward so she could have a look. The hole was on the other side as well. She let out a breath of relief. “Well, how about that? Looks like it did. Cleanly too. Thank god.”

Up close, Claire could tell from Leon's pallor that the sweat on his body wasn't just from the heat of the sun beating down on them. His skin was paler than before and the area around his eyes was starting to look gaunt and exhausted.

His long-lashed eyes moved up to meet hers and she could see how much pain he was feeling, just from his stare. He breathed out of his mouth, heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon seconds before and commented, “I'm probably starting to look like one of those things, huh?”

Claire knew he meant it as a joke but she started to wonder if the strain of virus that had infected Raccoon had somehow come into contact with them, if perhaps it was airborne or contact with surfaces or objects carried it, and if they too were at risk of turning. Sherry had been cured of the G-virus her father had infected her with, so that was one less worry on Claire's plate. She tried to shake it off, realizing that she could only deal with one problem at a time until they had shelter and a plan. Pressing a clean wipe with anti-bacterial medicine to Leon's shoulder, she apologized a few times after he winced more and tried to speedily wrap the wound so she didn't have to feel like an asshole any longer. When she was finished, she pulled the remaining sleeve back down over his shoulder to cover the freshly dressed wound.

“There. That's the best I can do for now. You didn't have any antibiotics handy in there so we're going to have to get you to a real doctor as soon as we can or that fever's going to get worse. Think you can walk?” Claire put everything back into Leon's pack and buckled it around her shoulder, carrying it for him. The less weight he had to drag around in his condition, the better. She then offered out a steady hand for him to take to help him stand.

Sherry moved to his other side and held out a hand too, radio forgotten for the time being. “Come on, we'll help you. We're friends now, right?”

Leon, tired and foggy in the head as he was, smiled weakly in the corner of his mouth and nodded, leaning forward and taking Claire's hand. His stand up off the ground wasn't graceful and he felt disoriented and dizzy. He reached out and put a hand on Claire's shoulder, getting his bearings. After a few deep breaths, he started to walk with the two of them along the side of the road, his pace staggered.

Sherry grabbed his hand tightly and looked up at him, waving the radio clasped in other hand. “Don't worry, you're going to be okay and we're going to find help. Claire's good luck. She saved my life too.”

Leon turned to give Claire a look of amusement and Claire just shrugged and grinned through the dirt caked on her freckled face. “Don't look at me. I didn't say it.”


	2. Keep Ourselves Intact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this one is short. It was meant to be part of the first chapter but I had to fine tune it a little bit and ended up chopping it off and publishing it on its own. The next chapter will definitely be a lengthier one!

Nearly two hours later, Sherry saw the motel's sign first, pointing her finger at the less than glamorous, slightly rusted landmark in the distance. They would've been there sooner if Leon's condition hadn't been dwindling as fast. Claire had ended up offering him her shoulder– he had laughed at her at first and when she asked why it was so funny, he'd dodged the question– and given him some small support to make the trip a little more bearable for the poor guy.

“Claire, don't we have to pay to stay there? Do we have enough money for all of us?” Sherry seemed genuinely worried and Claire, grunting slightly under Leon's weight, shook her head, reassuring Sherry they would be fine.

“I've still got my wallet in my jacket. And I might have a little extra in a hiding place.” Sherry's eyebrow slid up at that remark and she tucked the radio she'd been carrying under her arm to unzip the pockets of the jacket and look at any goodies she could find inside.

“Let me guess,” Leon stirred, having been nearly speechless the entire way, “Your boot?”

Sherry's ears perked up at the question and she looked over to Claire, wide-eyed and in suspense of the answer to the question. Claire's mouth curled at the sides into a devilish grin and she let out a low whistle. “Wow, you're good. Don't tell me you do the same thing?”

“Hey, don't forget,” he started, exasperated between pauses, “I'm a police offer. It's my job to know all the possible places that perps could be storing contraband.”

Claire turned to Sherry, away from Leon's view and she rolled her eyes playfully. Sherry just laughed and fished out the wallet from the red leather jacket. Her fingers traced over the design on the worn black surface; a valkyrie, holding a spear raised to the heavens, wings of fire behind her, and the words “ _Let Me Live_ ” across the bottom. 

“That's so cool,” Sherry uttered just over a whisper. She remembered the back of Claire's jacket had a similar design. Another angel but the wording had been different. Something about heaven? “Hey, Claire, did your brother give this to you too?”

“You've got a sharp eye there, kiddo.” Claire reminisced to herself before adding, “He'd gotten this jacket with the same design. I really liked it and as a birthday gift for turning 17 and getting my first real job, he gave that to me. It was made by the same guy and everything. That was Chris for you. He noticed the little things.”

The motel was close enough to see the parking lot. Two cars and a truck were parked normally and they didn't look like they'd seen any unusual wear and tear either. That was the first good sign. The second thing she noticed was that there was a light on in the lobby building beside the lot.

“Holy shit, I think we might be in luck,” she said, a hope springing in her chest that she hadn't felt for a long time. If there were people in there, _actual, live human beings_ , she'd ask them to call paramedics for Leon, first thing. Then, she'd see to renting out a room until help arrived; maybe there'd be time to take a shower and get a meal for her and Sherry. Obviously there had to be some kind of news about what was going on in Raccoon circulating by now. There couldn't be any way that a tragedy that big wasn't being cleaned up by the military and the government. 

Something in her gut made her weary about telling strangers what they'd just been through though. She had flashes of thoughts-- G-men whisking them away to some undisclosed location, shining spotlights in their eyes, grilling them on what they'd found out about Umbrella's agenda. Or worse, poking and prodding them in some lab, running tests on them to figure out if they were carriers and possibly quarantining them for an indefinite amount of time. Maybe it wouldn't be that extreme but she couldn't picture an outcome where everything would be easy; where they could just tell their story, laugh it off like some silly mistake that they'd walked right into a biohazard outbreak, and then skip out, scot-free, never to be bothered again.

Claire didn't want to complicate things for Sherry. Looking at her cherubic smile as she flipped through Claire's wallet, pulling out photos she'd stuffed in there haphazardly, Claire felt like it was now her duty to give Sherry the best life she possibly could. She shivered at the realization that the government would definitely want a valuable person of interest like the daughter of William Birkin, creator of the G-virus and now, mass murderer and terrorist.

“Everything okay, Claire?” Leon pulled her back out of her deep thoughts and she looked over to see him, brow wrinkled with concern and one eye open. “See any benches? I could use a break.”

Their feet hit pavement and Sherry ran ahead to open the lobby door. She wrapped her hand around the knob and started to turn it when the hairs on the back of Claire's neck stood up. She jolted forward, dragging Leon with her and held out her free arm. “Wait, don't!”

As if she'd touched a hot stove top, Sherry jumped back, folding her arms behind her back. “Are they here too?”

“We can't be sure. I should have a look first, just in case. Better to be safe than sorry.” She looked for a comfortable enough place she could put Leon down, spotting a worn out lawn chair against the wall, under a window planter of healthy looking flowers. “Alright, Leon. Dropping you off for a bit. No hard feelings, I hope?”

He let out a few small cries of discomfort as she helped him find the seat of the chair and made sure he was positioned comfortably before eyeing his sidearm holstered against his leg. “You still have shots left in that?”

“Six, I think,” he groaned, patting his Matilda. “Though I might be rounding up by one or two. Can't remember if I gave that giant bastard on the elevator a few extra shots for being such a pain in the ass.”

“Better than nothing,” she said, realizing she probably had less left in her SLS 60. Rounds had become scarce once she'd left the station. Guns and ammo apparently hadn't been in much use in the mysterious labs beneath the city. Luckily she still had her trusty knife; yet another gift from her brother.

“Sherry, stay here and watch over Leon. I'll be right back.” Sherry sidled up next to him. She then held Claire's wallet out for her to take.

“Don't forget this. And promise you won't get hurt.”

“I promise. And thanks.” Claire tucked the wallet into her back pocket and kept a hand hovering over her holstered firearm before carefully approaching the door. “Five minutes, tops.”

She winked and Sherry gave a timid smile back while Leon managed a half-hearted thumbs up.


	3. Signs of Life

The inside of the motel lobby was inviting and slightly old-fashioned in its décor. Yellow, sunny paint from wall to wall was the backdrop for wooden fixtures out of a 70's catalog. Magazines sat neatly stacked on an accent table, complete with a green-hooded desk lamp with a hanging chain. Floral-print upholstery on the armchairs on both sides of the table looked worn; Claire had a feeling the colors had been more vibrant years ago.

However, the thing that caught Claire's attention was that the front desk was suspiciously unmanned. She shuffled over, noticing that there was a back room behind the counter. The door was half open and Claire could hear the faint, fuzzy sound of a radio playing music.

“Hello?” she tried out, nervously ghosting her hand above her weapon, just in case. She turned her head back toward the door when she got goose pimples down her neck, feeling as if she were being watched. _Get a grip, there's no way something could be standing behind you without passing the others._

Swallowing her fears, she straightened up and spotted a guest book laid out on the wooden counter and slid it closer to scan over it. “The most recent entries don't have sign out dates...” she whispered aloud to herself. The pegboard on the adjacent wall held what she assumed were the vacant room keys. There were four missing.

“Uh, hello? Anyone here?” She tried again, this time a little more agitated. She then eyed the golden bell, invitingly marked with a “ _Please Ring for Service!_ ” sign.

She held her breath and gave the bell a firm ding and waited for a reaction. There was nothing but the distant radio keeping the air from flat lining entirely with silence. She gave it another tap. And another.

A hard exhale escaped from her lips and she gritted her teeth.

_Maybe they're out? Or maybe they got evacuated? But then why would there still be guests in the rooms? Wouldn't they want their cars?_

///

The dry heat outside was making Leon's oncoming fever worse and he could feel his clothing entirely drenched in sweat. Insects buzzed from the nearby brush away from the pavement and he closed his eyes, feeling a wave of nostalgia as he remembered the sound of cicadas and crickets while camping with friends during summers as a kid.

Sherry sat on a parking curb a few feet away, once again fiddling around with Leon's radio. She'd had no luck reaching anyone and was starting to feel defeated. Still, she didn't have much else to do while she waited for Claire to come back.

Wondering how much time had passed, she looked down at her pink watch, which surprisingly was still in working fashion despite all the wear and tear she'd gone through. Three minutes. Claire would be back out soon. Standing up, she yawned and stretched, the fatigue she'd been staving off for the past three hours hitting her all at once. She shrugged off Claire's jacket and tied it around her waist, taking care not to let it drag on the ground since it was a little big on her.

“I can't get this to work,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Leon. She turned around, ready to give Leon the radio back since she was frustrated and when she saw him with his eyes closed she gasped. “Leon? Leon, wake up!”

She looked at his shoulder, her face screwing up a bit at the sight of the ghastly injury. She couldn't begin to imagine what it felt like or how he had kept going for so long. At first she wrote it off as him being a strong adult who probably worked out a lot. He was a police officer and she knew they were trained to be good at stuff like that. But then she remembered how many police officers she'd seen while she was running around the police station who had died so quickly or even killed themselves...

She shut off those thoughts and pressed a small hand to Leon's unbloodied other shoulder, pushing it gently to try to stir him. “Are you okay? Do you want me to get Claire?”

She looked around, making sure they were still the only ones in the area. She hugged her arms to her chest, her fists balling up. Then, deciding she shouldn't just stand there and that she had to do something, she took action and ran over to the lobby door, pressing her face to the glass to see if she could spot Claire.

She cupped her hands around her eyes to darken the glare of the sunny surroundings reflected off the surface. Her pale blue eyes darted from side to side, frantically.

The lobby was empty.

///

The back room was a derelict. When she'd opened the door, she'd expected to find an office with the same cleanliness and inviting atmosphere as the lobby. Instead, she'd been rudely surprised by the sight of papers scattered everywhere, an overturned chair, a framed picture on the wall tilted at a very displeasing angle, and traces of blood on the white berber carpeting. No dead bodies though. Or those things...

The radio in the corner was still very much alive though, belting out golden oldies as if nothing were wrong.

“Shit,” she seethed, her knuckles white from how hard she'd been clenching her fists. Still, regardless of whether or not she didn't have to fight, it was still not the outcome she'd been hoping for. She knelt down to get a closer look at the blood; it was brown-- that meant it was old.

 _Guess whoever got hurt hightailed it out of here a while back_. She stood up and turned around, deciding now that she should try the phone lines. Even if there wasn't another living soul around, the chances of help arriving for Leon were still much higher than they had been in Raccoon City.

“Claire!” It was Sherry's voice. Without a moment's thought, she sprung out the door, back into the lobby and grabbed her gun. Sherry's face was all she needed to see to know something was wrong. The girl ran over and grabbed Claire's arm, tugging her in the direction of the door. “Leon's not waking up! I don't know what to do!”

“Okay, okay,” Claire spoke in her calmest voice she could muster up at the moment and holstered her gun. She followed Sherry out the door and back over to Leon. The two of them huddled over him and Claire put her fingers to his neck, checking his pulse. Sherry hugged Claire and buried her face into the older girl's side, worried that the worst had happened. “He's still alive. His heart rate is abnormal though. Not good.”

She laid the back of her hand across his forehead, briefly touching damp strands of hair that stuck to his clammy skin. He was burning up.

“Damn it,” she hissed, turning away from him and clutching her own head in her hand, trying to figure out the next course of action.

“Did you find anyone?” Sherry asked, though the tone of her voice sounded like she already knew the answer. Claire lowered her eyes to the ground and shook her head. She had let them down. Guilt washed over her.

“Don't worry, okay?” Claire said, placing a hand on Sherry's shoulder. “We've made it this far. We're all strong people. For now, we have to lend Leon some of our strength and help him out. Think you can do that for me?”

Sherry nodded, pulling away from Claire. “We should use one of the rooms,” she said, facing the numbered doors across the lot. “There are beds and Leon can sleep in there.”

“Yeah, I saw the keys inside. Doesn't look like there's anyone around to get mad if we borrow a room. Worst case scenario, I've got my secret stash, remember?” Sherry looked at Claire's boot and wondered if having stuff in there was uncomfortable or not. “The lobby's safe. How about you go fetch us a key while I try to give Leon here a lift?”

For a moment, Sherry looked unsure about the task. Claire could sense she was a little weary and pulled her knife with its holster off of her belt.

“Here,” Claire bent down and strapped the holster to Sherry's thigh. “Ta-da. Back up plan. That's not a toy though, okay? You're pretty grown up though so I trust you to be careful with it.”

Sherry felt a new sense of courage with the knife on her and her posture tightened. “I'm okay, Claire. I got it.”

“That'a girl.” Claire kept her eye on the lobby through the window as Sherry ducked inside the doorway and she worked on slinging Leon up out of the seat.

His body was easily twenty pounds heavier than hers; he was taller and had more muscle on his frame than she'd initially assumed. She heaved as she swung his good shoulder up and over her arms, and pulled, managing to get him halfway out of the chair. “Come on, Leon, what have you been eating?”

Finally, she got him hanging off her and his eyes fluttered while shut, pain likely bothering him in his half-sleep. He seemed to be trying to stand with her help in his stupor, which meant Claire didn't have to take all of his weight. She took a few steps in the direction of the motel rooms and instantly, Leon's legs buckled and brought her down on top of him. Collapsed in a heap on the pavement, she felt flustered and embarrassed and also scared that she might've caused more harm than help. She scrambled to get up before Sherry returned and found that she was going to have to resort to dragging Leon from under his arms.

“I'm really sorry about this, Leon,” Claire muttered, hoping he could hear her somehow. She pulled him along the blacktop, shimmying her legs in an attempt to keep her balance. She heard the pitter-patter of Sherry approaching and looked up in her hunched position to see if things had gone okay.

“Room 07,” Sherry dangled the key by the numbered tag and smiled at her successful mission. “I chose it because it's a lucky number. Maybe it'll help Leon.”

“Maybe,” Claire smirked, grateful that Sherry's innocent outlook was there to keep her spirits up. In between her struggling grunts while dragging Leon she also added, “And maybe... there's a mini-fridge in there. If we're _super_ lucky.”

“Mega lucky!” Sherry appended.

“Super duper extra special with cherries on top lucky,” Claire said, fully allowing herself to try to stay positive and keep Sherry amused.

///

Sherry unlocked the door and Claire peeked inside. It was dark but she could see sunlight cutting through the blades of window blinds across the room. She felt along the wall beside the door for a light switch and flicked it on. The overhead lamp came on and along with it, a ceiling fan. Claire stepped in first, her boots steps muffled by the floor carpet beneath. Two queen size beds and a television on a stand, along with a door that looked like a bathroom entry were the only points of interest in the mostly blandly decorated room.

With Sherry's help, Claire managed to get Leon situated on top of one of the beds. She wondered if there was anything she should do to make him more comfortable and decided removing his patrol belt and weapon holster would probably be a good idea. She opted for his boots too in the end, only because his feet were probably pretty sore too and the boots smelled alarmingly bad. Chucking them in a corner of the room, she then laid the small fleece blanket at the foot of the bed over his bottom half, tucking the blanket under his arms.

“Guess that's as comfy as he can get for now.” Claire, now satisfied with Leon's situation for the time being, looked over to the bedside table and reached for the phone. She pressed the receiver to her ear, fingers at the ready to dial 911 when she heard the busy signal's discordant noise from the other end. _Figures._ She slammed it down on the hook and with her hands on her hips paced around.

“Phone's not working but I saw a payphone outside, maybe that one's on a different line.” She turned to Sherry who was already making herself at home on the other bed, sprawled out over the comforter, face dug into the super squishy pillow.

“Claire, I'm tired,” she yawned, wiping her sluggishly moving eyelids. “Can I stay here with Leon? I'll lock the door, that way we'll be safe.”

It hadn't even occurred to Claire that Sherry had literally been powering through the lingering weakness that curing the G-virus had left in her tiny body. She'd been a trooper, never complaining once. Claire kicked herself mentally, hoping Sherry wouldn't hold it against her for putting her through so much.

“Still have the knife?” Claire asked, brows perched and waiting for Sherry's reply.

Sherry lazily pointed to the holstered knife still on her thigh. She rolled over like a small cat and curled up. “I just need a little while to rest my eyes. Then I'll be better. I promise I won't take too long.”

“I think you've earned yourself a little break. In fact, more than just a break. How about a nice meal? I'm sure you're starving." As if on cue, Claire's stomach gurgled hungrily. She rubbed it and pouted. "Ugh, guess I am too. Let's see what I can dig up while I'm out there.”

“Yeah,” Sherry smiled, eyes closed and her voice trailing off. Claire let her drift off and she gave Leon another once over, adding finding any medical supplies she could to help him to her mental checklist. She checked over her equipment, making sure she'd be okay if anything happened, and stuffed the key in her side pack, making sure to lock the door before she shut it behind her.

///

The hot air hit her again and she suddenly missed the cool indoors already. She pulled out her wallet and made her way over to the payphone at the end of the parking lot, head turning to look at the other hotel rooms adjacent to theirs. The cars in the parking lot were still a mystery but seeing as they hadn't encountered anyone else yet, she didn't have high hopes.

Stepping into the booth, she turned her wallet upside down and tapped, gathering what loose change she had left into her palm. As she started picking up the quarter and dime she'd need out she heard a click from behind her and froze.

“Freeze.” The voice was a man's. It wasn't Leon either. Claire's heartbeat sped up.

“Hold on,” she started, suddenly worried that it was whoever owned the place, come to confront her about just taking a room without paying. “I can explain--”

“You come from around here? You have a car?” His voice, as strong as it was trying to be, was doing a bad job at hiding how unnerved he sounded. “Did you come from Raccoon?”

“Can I turn around? I'm not going to hurt you,” Claire said, slightly annoyed at being held up from getting help for Leon. The silence that followed wasn't cooperative. “Look, I was just trying to call an ambulance. My friend is hurt badly and he needs treatment.”

“You have a gun.” She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“And I'm not going to shoot you with it. Who are you? What do you want?” Her second time having a gun aimed at her in the past 24 hours and she was still not a fan of it.

The voice didn't answer but she could hear gravel underfoot as the person backed up a bit. She then heard the gun click again-- the safety being put back on-- and she let out her breath she didn't even know she had been holding.

“Shit,” the voice grumbled, and she slowly turned her head, along with the rest of her body.

A bedraggled man, Claire guessed around his late-forties, with unkempt hair and a stubble-covered face stood before her. His face looked worn and tired and she wagered he hadn't been taking care of himself lately.

“I saw you come over with that little girl and that man,” he remarked, the shotgun he'd been aiming at her now pointed at the ground. His dark eyes squinted over at her as he read her body language. “Did you take any money from the front desk?”

“No,” she reassured him, waving her hands innocently. She then showed him her wallet, opening it to reveal the three twenty dollar bills left inside. Unless their business had been completely down the shitter, she figured that should be proof enough that she was only working with her own funds. He scratched his chin.

“The three of us were in a bad accident,” she started, trying to stay vague but still toe the line of truth. Just in case. “My friend, the man, he was shot in the shoulder. The bullet passed through but he hasn't had proper medical treatment since. He's getting sick. I'm not sure if he can hold out too much longer.”

“Tough luck, girly,” he spat out, slinging the gun over his shoulder. “Phones ain't working in this area.”

“Even this?” she gestured toward the payphone, her change still clenched in her shaking palm. “No way, you've got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I don't kid and I don't joke. 'Specially these days.” He looked out toward the road, scanning the horizon for movement. “My wife and son left for Raccoon two days ago. Took the car and left me stranded.”

Claire didn't know if she liked where this story was headed. She fully came out of the phone booth and took careful steps closer to the stranger, hoping not to alarm him with her approach. He didn't seem hostile toward her anymore and was more focused on telling his tale.

“My wife was bitten by some asshole who came in the place acting like a lunatic,” he revealed, hanging his head low with sadness. “She was bleeding real bad. Denny, my son, he and I came running when we heard the screams. Got there just in time to deal with that violent son of a bitch.”

“And your son took her to the hospital?” Claire had put two and two together. Her heart sank. There was little chance that the two of them were still alive.

“I tried phoning in after a few hours and but they hadn't arrived yet. Next thing I know, the lines are all busy and no matter how long I waited, I couldn't get through.”

“I'm sorry,” Claire could only say. Her lips drew into a thin frown and she had thoughts of the burning city; the massive car pileups on the roads, debris blocking and littering every surface of the concrete maze, and the hundreds of dead, roaming, hungry for flesh.

“Yeah, well, seems like you've got your problems too.” He sized her up again. “You didn't answer my question though. You got a ride?”

“I had a bike. Ditched it outside the city before I hitched a ride with my friend. Our car didn't make it though. We got out of the city by train.” The more the stranger heard, the more disappointed his expression grew. Slack-jawed, he cursed under his breath and scratched his head. Claire looked towards the cars parked around the lot. “What about these? Who owns them?”

“Don't have the keys. Doors are locked and I know for a fact one of those belongs to a dead man. Had a heart attack a week before all this. I haven't had time to get the damn thing towed.” He motioned toward the other cars. “Don't matter much who owns them. Even if I did break in, I don't know the first thing about hot wiring a car and I'm not looking to be caught by the authorities if by chance I did get curious and start poking around in there.”

“So you've stranded yourself here willingly? Why not walk to another town? There's got to be something around here within distance.” She gave him an incredulous look. She couldn't relate to this guy's situation at all. The first few hours of no contact, especially if Chris or someone else close to her was in danger, she would've been long gone with whatever ride she could steal, damn the consequences.

“Guess I was just scared that there'd be more of those bastards out there waiting to jump me for what I did to their friend. Not to mention I have food and water and a roof over my head. I figure the odds are more in my favor this way.”

What a coward, Claire thought, angry for his family who probably died trying to make it to the hospital, wondering what they'd think of him sitting around on his ass, waiting for help like some scared child.

 _No,_ Claire thought, _even Sherry has more balls than he does._

“Guess I'll head out there myself and find help, seeing as you're not willing to.” Claire looked over toward room number 7, thinking of Sherry and Leon and hoping that they were still safe and sound without her. “But in return you'll let my friends stay here and rest, free of charge.”

“You're crazy, missy,” he laughed a throaty laugh, but she didn't think he found it very funny. “Next place over is hours away on foot and I'm not about to let you vandalize any of these vehicles on my watch. You got water or food in that pack of yours?”

He had her there. Her shoulders fell. “No. But if you're offering, I sure as hell wouldn't turn it down.”

“I'll tell you what; I'll even throw in some painkillers for your friend with the injury. You look like shit though. Sure you wouldn't rather wait it out the night, try again in the morning? Maybe some savior will come rolling in by then, save you the trouble of huffing it over to Old Court.” The mention of resting was super tempting and it wasn't until he'd put the thought into her head that her whole body suddenly started to feel much heavier than before. The soles of her feet were likely calloused and bruised from non-stop walking and running and the muscles in her legs burned. Maybe the guy was right.

///

Claire unlocked the door to the room and slid inside, taking care to be quiet in case Sherry was sleeping. Instead, she found the girl sitting cross-legged, facing Leon... who appeared to be awake.

“See?” Sherry said, sounding like she was finishing a conversation. “I told you she'd be back with food.”

Sherry had noticed the boxes of crackers, water bottles, and cans of food tucked under Claire's arms with ravenous eyes and she leaped up from the bed and honed in on them, reaching eager fingers to grab at anything she could get.

“Here, all yours,” Claire laughed, handing most of the items off to Sherry until her arms were full. She carried her bounty over to her bed and dumped it on to the blanket, taking inventory of what they had. Claire eyed Leon, giving him a tired smile. “Glad to see you're still among the living.”

“Yeah,” Leon answered, his voice groggy and throat sounding parched. “It was kind of a surprise to myself too. I don't even remember how I got here.”

“We dragged you,” Sherry cut in, her focus still mostly on studying the cans of food and reading their contents. “Well, Claire did most of it. But I helped.”

“Really? Sorry about that. Hope I wasn't too much trouble.” Leon let out a weak laugh. He tried to sit up a bit to position himself better but didn't get very far and clutched his shoulder in pain. “Agh, shit. Almost forgot for a minute.”

Claire moved to his side and took a seat on the edge of the bed, motioning for him to stay where he was and then digging into her pack for a moment. “Oh no you don't. Just rest. Here. Got this for you. It's not much but maybe it'll help take the edge off a bit.”

She held up a bottle of painkillers and unscrewed the top, holding it out for Leon's palm. He took a few of them and Sherry brought over a bottle of water for him to wash it down. The three of them were silent for a minute or two, just taking in the peaceful air around them.

"How do you feel?" Claire asked, feeling like she'd temporarily failed at getting Leon the help he needed. She hoped he was strong enough to pull through if they had to wait it out for a little while longer.

"Got anything hard to drink in that bag of yours?" He joked, showing a new side of himself that Claire hadn't seen yet. "I'm not going to be doing any heavy lifting for a while if that's what you're asking. I'm sorry I passed out like that. That was irresponsible and I shouldn't've let it happen. I was supposed to be watching Sherry."

"Leon," Claire began, placing a gentle hand on his arm. "Don't beat yourself up about it. You're only human, and, if I remember right, you're the one with a big hole in your shoulder. No one's blaming you."

She gave his arm a squeeze and he nodded, took a few more swigs from his water and stewed in his thoughts. "I just don't like feeling useless. I should be the one protecting you both."

“You'll get your chance, hot shot. Until then, just focus on getting better." For a while they both sat there, staring into each other's eyes eyes until Claire finally broke the silence, bending over to unbuckle her own disgusting boots. “Hey, Sherry, why don't you decide what's on the menu for tonight? I know it's not gourmet cuisine but at least we're not eating cat food yet.”

Sherry giggled, though Claire wasn't sure if she was just humoring her. “Uhm, Leon can have the pasta since that's like bread and it's really filling. I'm going to have the chicken soup! And you can have the beans. I don't like beans.”

She handed out the cans and Claire asked for the knife so she could open them up. The three of them ate their meager meals, sharing crackers in between and chatting about whatever came to mind.

For the first time all day, they felt safe.


	4. The Calm Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos and it's been super humbling to see how many people are liking this story so far. So without further adieu, here's the newest chapter! This one's a little more character-develop-y than the other ones, but I wanted to build the relationships a bit more before things get crazy. And trust me, they will get crazy.
> 
> I might pop in and edit this chapter a few times, so if anything looks messy, I should have it fixed and cleaned up soon.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy! :D

_The school bus's doors parted and Sherry stepped off, ruck sack bouncing up and down her back as she hit the sidewalk. She turned around and the plump, lady bus driver waved at her with a warm, cheery smile before taking off. Sherry waited patiently and watched as the bus drove down the road and turned the corner out of the neighborhood._

_A pang of loneliness hit her and she spun around to face the looming building in front of her._

_Her home._

_She approached the door and shrugged off her ruck sack, unzipping it and digging in the front pocket to fish out her house key. Unlocking the door, she stepped inside and set her coat and bag down neatly next to a side table in the hall. She slid off her slightly dirtied, once-white sneakers and set them on a rack beside larger, cleaner adult shoes of various styles._

_Her small feet softly pattered against the wood flooring as she walked down the hall that led past a stairwell and the living room and arrived at the kitchen. Upon entering the room, she noticed a note on the counter top but quickly chose to ignore it. She opened the fridge and grabbed an unopened carton of milk. Fetching a glass for herself out of a tall cabinet (she had to climb up on the counter to reach it), she poured some milk and sat in a nearby stool at the island in the center of the kitchen. All was quiet save for the soft humming of the cooling system ventilating in the corner of the ceiling._

_She looked around, eyeing the front of the fridge where two things of note hung. The first was her report card. It was mostly good grades, save for her social skills lacking a bit. “Sherry is a well-behaved child,” the comment read. Sherry imagining her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Tanner's voice in her head speaking them aloud. “But she often displays shyness and a lack of tendency to reach out and interact with any of her classmates. She instead chooses to do solitary activities during free periods. A guidance counselor is available for consultation.”_

_She wasn't shy. She just didn't know what to say and didn't think anyone else would want to be her friend. She was the weird, tiny girl with the big ears and the busy scientist parents who lived in a big empty house, alone._

_She remembered writing about her parents on one of her assignments when she was in the second grade, thinking her classmates would be impressed. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”_

_“A scientist!” she'd written, in big balloon letters, with childish handwriting. “Like mom & dad.”_

_She'd wanted to help people, thinking about all the medicine Umbrella was making to save lives. She also loved to dream about going to work and being around them all day, seeing them more than just the few hours a week she usually did._

_When the teacher had invited the children's parents to come and give talks about what they did for a living, she'd had to watch as everyone else presented their moms and dads and got to be starry-eyed and proud in front of everyone else._

_Sherry's dad had been on a trip and her mom had too much work to do before a deadline._

_That had been years ago. Now, she'd changed her mind about what she wanted to do. She'd read story books and watch movies and dream of going on adventures with all sorts of characters who could inspire her and teach her how to be stronger. She wanted to be able to ignore the isolated feeling she would get when surrounded by normal, happy people and she wanted to be able to smile and be brave and talk to them and laugh and share stories about her life._

_She finished her glass of milk and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at her pink, plastic watch and saw that it was only 3:00 PM. They wouldn't be home until 11._

_… If they even planned on coming home that night._

_The last time she'd caught her mom before leaving for school, her mom had told her that her dad had just made a significant breakthrough and that they needed extra time to perfect it and that she hoped Sherry understood and that she loved her._

_Her mom always said the same things. “We love you,” she would say, as if it made up for everything they had put her through. “You're such a smart and grown up young woman and you're doing a wonderful job. I know it's tough, but we're almost finished.”_

_But Sherry had the feeling she didn't know how tough it was. Her mom never had to be alone, eating packaged, precooked meals for one, figuring out her homework with only books to help her, and sitting on the couch all night, watching cartoons, hoping that someone would walk through the door and say hello to her._

_The second object on the fridge seemed to be mocking her as she got up to rinse her glass in the sink. They'd taken it at the beginning of the year, in the spring, on Sherry's birthday. The three of them in a portrait, smiling together. It was one of the only pictures of all of them together that Sherry had ever seen. There were photo albums of her as a baby and a toddler that she'd dug up while snooping in her parents' things out of boredom. But she was always alone, on display, and posed so daintily. There weren't pictures of her mother holding her or her dad teaching her to walk or any birthday cakes with family members and friends gathered around, watching Sherry blow out the candles._

_She left the kitchen, still passing by the note left for her again. She already knew what it would say._

_The big window in the living room was her favorite place to sit and think. The curtained draped on either side made it look luxurious and royal and the large flat space on the accent table below the pane was just wide enough for her to sit on. She climbed up and hugged her knees to her chest, giving a long sigh aloud, just to hear the sound of her own voice cut through the suffocating silence._

_Outside, rain was starting to fall, the sky just as gray and overcast as Sherry's emotions. Her reflection looked back at her, and she couldn't tell if the water running down it was from the droplets on the other side or tears on her face..._

///

Sherry awoke from her sleep and forgot where she was. Her throat was scratchy and dry and her eyes were itchy and she sat up. Yawning, she tried to blink traces of her nap away and adjust her vision to her surroundings.

Flashes of memory suddenly hit her and she remembered everything. The lazy ceiling fan swung overhead in the motel room, and she gazed over toward Leon's limp form, sleeping in the bed on the other side of hers. He looked at peace.

“Claire?” she spoke aloud, realizing that her new friend was no where in sight. She hadn't come back yet. Sherry frowned and clutched at her neck worriedly, then remembered that her locket was no longer there to grasp out of habit. 

_... I didn't want the locket back because mom left me alone and let dad hurt me and looking at it made me so angry. I'm so sorry, mommy. I should've kept it._

She swung her legs off the side of the large queen-size bed and her black socks hit the fuzzy carpet. She coughed a bit, wanting water more than anything to quench her growing thirst.

The bathroom hadn't been scoped out yet. It was bare bones; a toilet, a bathtub with a sliding, frosted glass shower door, a sink rested over a cabinet, and a mirror with lights curled over the top. All were painted or accented a clinical white.

The sink still worked and she ran her hands under the cool, clean water. She stood on her tiptoes to get a better look in the mirror.

A dirty, slightly unrecognizable version of herself stared back. Her hair was almost entirely falling out of the neat bun she wore to school every day and cheeks had dirt and soot on them. She splashed water against her face and rinsed it over and over again. Then she sipped some of it from the running tap, instantly feeling refreshed and invigorated. She shut her eyes shut tight to prevent water from getting in them and blindly reached out beside her, grabbing on to a hand towel nearby.

When she was finished, she pulled the rest of her shoulder-length hair out of the bun, letting the blond tresses freely fall and relax. She tilted her head and tried on a smile, doing her best to feel like herself again. But staring at her reflection; her fair features and hair; all she could see was her mother and father looking back at her.

She stepped away and her breath became shaky. Before she knew it, tears were streaming down her face. She sniffled and sobbed and slid against the wall and into a pile on the floor.

Her mother had been so cold to her for so long and yet, she had been there to save her, even with her body as beaten and bloodied as it had been, succumbing to fatal wounds. Sherry recalled the way her mother had apologized to her, for the last time, and finally, Sherry had truly believed it.

“ _Your life is what is important now._ ”

Those words kept playing in her head, over and over.

Finally, she calmed down and her eyes were too puffy and red to keep crying. She took a few deep breaths and rose from the ground, drying her face with the hand towel she used before. Picking up her hair tie and hairband she'd left on the sink top before, she pulled back her hair and put it up into a ponytail, trying on a look similar to Claire's.

She smiled and whipped her head around, posing and making different expressions to see how she'd look in action. Then her shoulders sank and she felt goofy. She didn't want Claire to think she was copying her style and pulled the hair out of the tie. She settled for putting her head band back on, to keep her hair out of her eyes, but stuffed the hair tie in her pocket.

She'd have to ask Claire if she could help her with new hairstyles. She was so cool and fashionable. Sherry was sure that Claire's wardrobe had all sorts of stylish clothes and pictured her having a vanity with real, grown up make up and hair clips and ties and tons of jewelry.

Sherry turned off the light of the bathroom and went back into the motel room. She was about to shuffle back over to the bed when a sound caught her off guard.

“Cleaned up, huh?” Her eyes widened and she jumped a bit at the sound of Leon's voice. He sounded tired and hoarse, but alive. She gulped and nervously smiled, nodding.

“There was a lot of dirt on my face. It was gross.” She climbed up on to her bed and scooted over to the edge, facing Leon, cross-legged. She flipped on the bedside table, illuminating their faces a little better. “There's a bathtub in there too! But... I don't have a change of clothes.”

Leon leaned back a bit, letting his head rest briefly against the pillows stacked beneath it. “A hot bath sounds like heaven. I've still got sewage stink all over me. Don't think I'm fit for standing up too long like this though.”

He took a few breaths and rose his head again, taking a slow look around the new location.

“Where's Claire?” he asked, concern strong in his voice. “Are we still at the motel?”

“Yeah, we got a room. Claire's okay. She went to go look for a phone because the one here didn't work for some reason and she wants to get you to a doctor. She said there was a phone outside that she wanted to try and that she'll be right back.” Sherry bit her lip, trying to think of anything else important to add. “Oh! And she's gonna find us some food too. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” Leon snorted, actually having forgot about his appetite completely for a while. He struggled to think of when his last meal had been, unsure if he'd even had lunch. He finally remembered how he'd planned on grabbing a bite to eat at a local joint in the city on his way to the RPD. How wrong of a choice that had been. “Didn't think to pack any snacks with me.”

As soon as he'd finished speaking the words, the front door opened and a very tired, yet, relieved Claire walked in, carrying cans, boxes, and bottled water and Sherry's face lit up.

“See?” Her timid disposition changed in Claire's presence entirely. “I told you she'd be back with food!”

///

Once they had finished their modest meal of canned goods and crackers, Claire collected their trash and tidied up. Sherry grabbed Claire's jacket off the bed and scampered over to her, holding it out.

“Thank you for letting me wear this, Claire,” she told her, a look of complete idolization in the young girl's eyes. “It's really cool. Maybe I can find one like it someday.”

Claire shook her head and pushed the jacket back toward Sherry, gesturing for her to keep it. She knelt down, leveling her eyes with Sherry's. “You keep it. It can be an early birthday present.”

“My birthday's not until March.” Sherry replied, still dumbfounded that Claire was being so nice to her. “Are you sure you don't need it?”

“Hell yeah!” Claire gushed, standing up putting a hand on the girl's shoulder. “And when we get out of here, I'll take you shopping for some new clothes. My treat.”

Sherry gave Claire another hug and then pulled away to look up at her new best friend. “Hey, uhm, I have a favor to ask.”

Claire shuffled over to the bed and Sherry sat down beside her, plopping down on the mattress' edge with a bounce. “What's up?”

A little tongue-tied at first and slightly red in the face, Sherry pulled at her hair and looked to the side, “Do you know any good hairstyles?”

Letting out a giggle, Claire patted Sherry's arm. “What was wrong with the way you had it before? You want me to put your hair up for you?”

“It's just that--” Sherry sighed and tried to collect her thoughts. She didn't want the bun anymore. She didn't want any reminders of her old life and how miserable and lonely she had been. “I don't like it anymore.”

Claire seemed to understand and didn't pry anymore. She put a finger to her lips, sizing up Sherry's tresses, exaggerating her expression to look like she was thinking super hard. “Hmm, well, let's see what we've got here to work with.”

She turned Sherry so her back was facing her and picked up wheat-colored strands of her hair, running her fingers through it to comb it straighter. “Scrunchie? Hair tie? What'd you use before?”

Sherry dug the plain, red hair tie out of her pocket and handed it over her shoulder while Claire started to braid her hair into pigtails. It was relaxing and soothing to the young girl and she closed her eyes, wishing her mom had done things like this for her.

Nearby, Leon was napping again and Sherry could hear his soft breathing and see his chest rise and fall. He didn't look that old now that he was resting again. She wondered how old he and Claire were and then realized they probably didn't even know how old she was. She still had so much to tell them. They didn't know her favorite color, her favorite animal, her favorite book. She would have to ask them what they liked too. 

“And... voila!” Claire finished with her hair and got up from the bed, taking Sherry by the shoulders and leading her to the bathroom. Sherry gasped at how different she looked. “How'd I do?”

She ran her fingers down the braids, in awe that her plain hair could look so pretty. She grinned and jumped up and down. “Oh my god! I love it, I love it, I love it!”

Claire must've had an extra hair tie because one of the braids had a little, blue polka-dot scrunchie in it. Sherry didn't mind and liked the way it looked and matched colors with her school vest.

“If I had some hair pins and a can of spray, I could've gotten really crazy. I think this is super cute though,” Claire put her hands on her hips, proudly. “Suits you well, kiddo.”

///

Hours had passed. Claire laid on the bed beside a curled up Sherry who had drifted off while holding Claire's hand. She couldn't bring herself to pull it away and turn her back to sleep on her side. Staring up at the ceiling, and drifting into a half-sleep, she began to have lucid nightmares about Raccoon City and the monsters she'd dealt with.

The zombie-like people were bad enough. It was the even more fucked up things like the inside-out ones with claws and long tongues, clacking and hissing along the walls in dark hallways. Walking past them had been one of the most terrifying moments in her entire life, holding her breath to test if her sneaking would work. She could feel goosebumps on her back as she recounted how one had slashed at her while she ran through a door; how the air whooshed behind her and was enough to chill her to the bone.

Then there were the dogs. She couldn't stand seeing animals being hurt or abused and having to shoot at the diseased canines had left her feeling guilty and disturbed. The fact that the virus had been able to infect innocent animals too was unforgivable.

Jolting back into full consciousness, she felt her heart hammer in her chest and cursed silently at herself for not being able to fully let herself rest.

“Sorry,” she whispered, sliding her fingers out from under Sherry's and watched as the dark shape of the tiny girl readjusted herself and lazily turned toward the other end of the wall, cozy and curled up. She mumbled under her breath and Claire didn't move a muscle until she knew the girl was still sound asleep.

She sat up and ran a hand over her face, fatigue dizzying her thoughts. She still didn't know what they were going to do in the morning. Their host, who remained nameless, had been so sure that help was on the way. Claire wanted to have faith, but she didn't like leaving her fate in other people's hands. Her body shifted off the bed and she walked over to the windows, still blocked by the window blinds hanging over the panes. She pulled at one of the blind panels, moving it to peek outside the motel's confines.

The day was still a hazy orange; the sun would be setting soon. Claire looked at her watch to see it was 4:40 PM. For once she was glad to be an hour ahead; sleeping during the day always made her feel awful, even if she was dead exhausted like she was now.

“Claire?” She turned around, looking for the source of the hushed voice. It was Leon. He was trying to get out of bed, but looked woozy and off balance. He had his feet on the floor, but couldn't seem to bring himself to stand up quite yet. Making her way over to him, her eyebrows furrowed and she tilted her head in the darkness. “You alright?”

“Y-yeah,” she said, answering a little too quickly to sound genuine. She kept her voice low, doing her best not to rouse Sherry. “I mean, no. No. Not really.”

He seemed to be stable enough to keep upright and hung his head in response. “Yeah,” he confided, “Me neither.”

Claire took a seat on the bed beside him, keeping enough distance to not invade his space, but close enough to hear his voice as they spoke back and forth. After all of this time, they hadn't had much conversation between the two of them. It was strange, almost as if they were old friends that hadn't seen each other in years. Complete strangers connected by the same terrible course of events.

“I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier,” Leon started, bringing his eyes up to meet hers, his face looking pained in what little amber light cut through the window blinds, “I found another woman. Another survivor.”

“I heard you talking to Sherry earlier,” Claire said, glancing over at the little girl briefly and then back to Leon. “That's how you got shot, right? What happened?”

“The woman I met, she told me her name was Ada Wong. She showed me a federal badge and said she worked for the FBI. She'd also saved my ass a couple of times. I thought she was one of us, you know? That I could trust her.” He clenched his fists and ran his thumbs over the curl of his forefinger, teeth gritting. “She was looking for Umbrella's secret lab. She needed a sample to bring back for analysis. We were chasing a lead under the city streets when we met Annette Birkin. Ada knew who she was and we chased after her.

“Annette Birkin shot me.” Claire's jaw hung open and she shook her head in extreme disbelief.

“No wonder you didn't want to say anything before,” Claire finally responded, feeling sick to her stomach.

“Well, if it makes any difference, she wasn't trying to shoot at me. She was gunning for Ada. I ran into her again, alone, later, in the labs, after that thing that used to be her husband tried to attack us both. I guess she had known all along that Ada wasn't FBI but some sort of paid mercenary, there to swipe a sample of the virus to sell for a fortune.” Leon rubbed the sides of his forehead, as if it would loosen his tension and help him stop feeling the way he did. “I didn't want to believe it but, god damn it, Annette didn't have any reason to lie to me. Ada played me like a damned fool. I really thought she was there to help people. Me, a bona fide officer of the law, falling for a fake badge.”

“Is she--?” Claire started, reluctant to ask for fear she already knew the answer.

“Dead?” Leon sardonically laughed under his breath. He shrugged. “Probably. I grabbed a sample of the G out of the Level 4 labs and on my way to meet up with Ada at the cable car, I guess I triggered the self-destruct sequence. “

“So that's what happened,” Claire concluded, thinking back to how the sequence had went off as Sherry and her mother were having a tearful good-bye. “We were in the labs too. I'm surprised we didn't cross paths.”

“I was trying to find Ada. I wasted time because when I finally found her, she was hacking the elevator in the main chamber. Almost looked like she was trying to leave without me.” Leon grew silent for a moment, conflict in his hoarse voice. “I told her I knew everything and she aimed a gun at me, confirming my suspicions. I thought she was going to shoot me to take the sample. In the end, she couldn't do it and I thought, for just a moment, she was going to turn herself in and do the right thing.

“She didn't get the chance though. Annette Birkin shot her. It all happened so fast. The walkway started to collapse and... she...” he exhaled. “She fell. I tried to hold on. She didn't want me to.”

Claire didn't budge for a long time and just sat in silence beside Leon, letting him breathe and recollect his composure. Then, she gently placed a hand on his knee.

“I'm so sorry.” Claire couldn't begin to imagine how hurt Leon felt; about the betrayal, about his injuries, and about losing someone he wanted to save. “You tried to help her. That's what counts. You're a good person, Leon. Don't blame yourself.”

“It's just that after all of that,” he struggled, eyes closed tight, “I've felt so useless. I know, I've been shot, but I feel like ever since I started this job, I've been fucking it up constantly.”

“You didn't exactly have a normal first day,” Claire chimed in.

“You got that right,” he agreed, noting she had a point and he was holding himself to some pretty impossible standards. He'd fought death defying odds and had managed to survive. Barely. “I don't think any other rookie officer's had to run from an overgrown, mutated alligator.”

“W-what?” Claire wanted to laugh but she couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. “Tell me you're kidding.”

Leon's face softened and he chuckled softly. “That was definitely one experience the academy didn't train me for.”

“A giant alligator though? How?” Claire's mind went to urban legends of gators prowling in sewers underneath busy city streets, chomping down on rats and swimming through the murk, their heads bobbing just beneath the surface. “You know what, never mind. I shouldn't even be surprised. Especially after the dogs.”

“Jesus, those dogs,” Leon joined in, wincing at the memories of the infected canines chasing after him, gnarling their bloody teeth and howling unnaturally. They had been all over the basement of the station, lurking around the parking lot he'd had to pass through to get to the jail. They'd been too fast for him to waste time narrowing down their numbers with what little ammunition he had at the time. “I guess the virus didn't infect everything; imagine if we'd had to face off against giant spiders or even hostile birds.”

“No thank you,” Claire shivered, thinking about how thankful she was that she hadn't had to tackle getting over her arachnophobia at the same time. “Did you go through the sewers to get to the lab? Did you happen to run into those big... disgusting fleshy assholes with the eyeballs?”

“Don't remind me. I had to jam my arm up one of those things'... snout? Shit, maybe it was its _mouth_ \-- to shove a grenade in there.” Claire raised her brow at that comment. Leon rubbed the back of his head, modestly. “It grabbed me and it was the only thing I could think of at the time.”

“I don't think that was its snout. Didn't you see it popping those things out? Almost like it was giving birth,” Claire added on.

“Now I really need a shower.” Leon looked over to the bathroom across the room and leaned forward, trying to see how shifting his weight felt. He managed to rise into a weak stand and Claire rose with him, letting him use her for balance until he got his bearings. “You manage to run into any spare clothes when you got that food? I'm worried I'm getting too used to the smell of these.”

“Should've put that on the list,” she smiled, taking small steps with him over to the bathroom. “Are you going to be okay in there?”

“I hope so. Don't think my pride can take another hit.” He opened the door and flipped the switch and the light poured into the adjacent room. Sherry shifted a bit in her sleep but was deep into a restful slumber and merely grabbed the edge of her pillow and curled up into it harder. Leon looked towards Claire and she looked back, as if almost to silently say ' _that was a close one._ '

“I'll try to be quiet,” he promised, lingering in the doorway a little longer. Claire nodded and watched as he slowly shut the door behind him. She didn't like leaving him alone when he had been so weak before, but she also didn't feel like it was appropriate for her to help him bathe this early in their friendship. She'd also gotten a strong feeling that Ms. Ada Wong had left quite the impression on Leon in _another kind of way_ entirely through the way he'd reacted.

Even if he was attractive, single, and had probably been the only person in the world that knew what she was going through, she'd let him figure out his emotions and would try keep things merely cordial between them.

She took a long drawn out breath and looked to the window with its blinds. The sun had set. She lied down on the bed next to Sherry and stared at the young girl. Claire's heart warmed seeing Sherry's blissful face and swelled with pride at how strong the kid had been through it all.

Claire thought back to when she'd been a kid and Chris had told her about their parents' accident. For weeks, she'd refused to do anything and only wanted to cry and stay in her room all day. It was embarrassing to think back on when Sherry'd just been through the same thing and more. If only Claire had had a friend like Sherry to look to for inspiration when she'd been the same age. Even if her parents hadn't been there as much as they should've, Sherry was still a saint of a kid and had a good heart. She'd had all the reason in the world to be bitter and act like a little shit head and yet...

Her eyes watered slightly, thinking about it and she reached for Sherry's hand again, interlacing her fingers with the child's and closed her eyes.

_Everything's going to be better from now on, I promise._

The last thing she heard before she finally drifted to sleep was a faucet in the bathroom coming on and sounds of water running...

She smiled, thinking about waterfalls and a nice, warm beach on a tropical island.


	5. No Rest for the Wicked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a lot longer for me to write and I apologize for the wait!
> 
> I wanted to get the story moving but my brain was very picky about trying to keep it all reigned in (which meant rewriting nearly half the chapter when I wasn't happy with the way it was flowing). There's not as much character relationship development in this one, but I've got plenty more of that to come in the next chapter I've outlined!
> 
> Some RE fans might notice I very subtly hinted at Umbrella Chronicles' canon (for some people, maybe in a blink and you'll miss it way) where a certain character is still alive and took some liberties to mix parts of it in with my story.

If Leon had been alone, he would've gladly kept wearing a towel instead of his musty, ragged uniform. He didn't have much of an alternative though and eventually (and begrudgingly) had to slip back into them, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the way the fabric felt heavy and squishy in some parts.

His arm looked a lot better after being gently rinsed off and cleaned. The bleeding had stopped for the time being and the blood had started to scab at the edges. While he'd been bathing, he'd taken great care not to disturb the healing process and to only dab at the wound.

At the very least, he'd have less of a chance at getting a serious infection now. With the last of his antiseptic, he disinfected the area and then wrapped it up, using a clean hand towel torn into strips for the bandaging. Another towel he fashioned into a makeshift sling to take stress off of his shoulder's aching muscles.

_Second day on the job and I'm destroying someone's property. Serve and protect, my ass._

Leon wiped steam off the mirror with his good hand, giving himself a once-over glance to make sure he looked human again. His hair was still damp and he'd slicked it back a bit but knowing how unruly it was, he knew it'd be hanging over his head soon enough.

He gently turned the knob of the door and pulled it open, a centimeter at a time, hoping he could safely get back to his bed without waking either of the girls up. He switched off the light on his way out and took slow breaths, taking as few steps as he could across the carpet. He reached the bedside table where his holster and secondary packs laid, along with the radio Sherry had unsuccessfully fumbled with before.

Leon took a seat on the edge of the bed and instantly felt his body thanking him for the relief from standing. He'd been pushing it a little too much; trying to prove not only to Claire but to himself that he could be self-sufficient and a reliable member of their burgeoning team. He looked over to Claire, just barely making out her pale, soft features in the dark of the room. She laid on her stomach, facing him, her hands grasping at the sides of her pillow as if she were holding on for her dear life. It was strange seeing someone he'd only known constantly in peril now completely silent and peaceful.

It seemed to be contagious too because soon after, Leon caught himself forcing a yawn. He sunk back into the pillows he'd used to prop himself up earlier and held up the radio, switching it on. The channels were still all dead air as he flipped through them, one by one, but Claire had mentioned over their meal that the man who owned the motel was holding out hope for the military to come clean up. If Raccoon had gotten this bad, Leon guessed that there had to be a contingency plan ready. Umbrella's model city had become a necropolis and word must have traveled to their corporate owners about their precious experiments being destroyed by now.

Whether or not the true story would be told to the public was the question.

Enigmatic and shady were the two things Leon picked up from his brief run in with Umbrella. What kind of normal pharmaceutical company would keep their base of operations hidden beneath a city, locked away behind puzzles and bribed officials? He shivered to think how long they'd been keeping a clean image, charming the citizens of their own city with billboards and commercials with smiling faces and the promise of improving people's lives.

 _Has something like this happened before? What if Raccoon's not the first time?_ He started to dig up memories of headlines he'd read about freak accidents that had happened in the past 10 years, paranoid and skeptical about their legitimacy. Then he tried to wrap his head around how Raccoon's incident would be written off. 

_Nuclear meltdown, maybe? It'd give them a good reason to keep the press from investigating too closely and they could cordon off the area until they had it under control._

If what Ada had implied was true, Umbrella couldn't have just had Raccoon's city officials in their pockets. They had headquarters all over the world. What if the U.S. Department of Defense was already full of officials they'd personally appointed to keep something that big of a SNAFU under wraps?

 _What a mess._ Leon continued to click the radio's dial, listening to the soft static of no reply on the other end. He finally left it idling on a frequency the National Guard used for emergencies, just in case, and put it down on the bedside table. He'd left the speaker on low volume and set it facing him. 

He curled one arm under his head and rolled on to his side, staring across at Claire in the other bed, watching hypnotically as she breathed in... and out...

Leon's eyelids fluttered and started to grow heavy. His vision went out of focus and he finally gave into sleep, the stinging and burning in his arm beginning to feel years away.

///

_"Leon -"_

Something or someone had jolted him awake from his deep slumber. Leon looked around the room, sure as hell he'd heard Ada's voice speaking to him. He sat up, hissing and grasping his shoulder as it started to trouble him again and he searched the room, seeing only the same familiar dark shapes as before.

With his heart hammering in his chest, he let his gasping breaths calm and sunk back into the mattress.

 _Damn it_ , he mentally kicked himself for imagining things, _she's not here. She couldn't have survived that fall, no way._

He lay there on his back, staring up at the plain, stucco ceiling, trying to recall Ada's face in his memory; her almond eyes and ruby lips and a look of determination like no other.

_“Bzzzt – bzz –”_

Leon rolled over immediately and looked at the radio, blinking his eyes in disbelief. He was definitely losing it. He snatched it off the table top and brought it to his ear, hoping his mind wasn't playing tricks on him.

_“Bzz – zzzzzt – get out – zzzzt –”_

“What the hell?” he whispered aloud, his face screwing up at the broken words coming through from the other end. He tried adjusting the frequency dial slightly to see if he could get it to come in clearer, but it was likely the distance of the source effecting the quality. He got out of bed and slid his boots on, taking his Matilda and packs with him and made for the door. From the peephole, the parking lot was quiet as ever and there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary skulking around. He looked over to Claire and Sherry and thought for a moment, wondering if he should tell Claire that he was going outside to try to get a better signal.

But he didn't have the heart to wake her up. She'd had the longest day out of them all. He wanted to return the favor. He wouldn't be gone long, hopefully.

He opened the door and stepped out into the cool evening air. It was strange being back outside. Instead of the orange sunlight that had warmed him into a sickly sleep before, a pale half-moon painted everything in glowing eerie white light, casting severe shadows behind every object in the parking lot. A slight breeze blew through, sending a chill up Leon's body. His shoulders rose in response, seizing up briefly from the cold.

With the radio in hand, he began to travel toward the end of the lot, past the numbered motel rooms, until he ran out of paved ground. Still, the signal was fuzzy and he couldn't quite make out what the hell the voice on the other end was saying. He decided to venture a bit farther, out on to the dirt and brush, his boots going from a tapping to stifled thuds across the ground. The soil was a little easier on his sore feet and the fresh air was doing wonders for the slight nauseous feeling leftover from his bed rest before.

His mind began to wander and he thought about before, how he'd been so sure Ada had woken him up. Part of him knew how stupid and unrealistic and childishly naive it was to think that she had survived the drop and that she would even want to talk to him after everything that had happened. He stopped walking and tried to recall the hint of perfume he'd breathed in when she'd leaned in close, cupped his face, and kissed him with her intoxicating lips.

Something floral... with a hint of spice. He ran his forefinger across his lips, his body remembering the sensation that had swept over him and made him want to desperately find her the G-virus and be her knight in shining armor.

And then his fist clenched and he hated himself again for buying into any of her fantasy. He'd been another tool at her dispense; so easily manipulated. Had the kiss even been real? Or had it been her desperate last attempt to have him do the dirty work for her after her leg injury slowed her mission down? He thought he'd felt a spark between them; back when he'd woke up from being shot and had found her jacket resting over his body, his arm dressed with care; there was no way she would've jeopardized her mission to do that if she hadn't cared at least some small bit. She could've easily left him for dead and caught up with Annette sooner, maybe before something had gotten the drop on her and trapped her in that waste disposal room. The bracelet she'd “borrowed” had opened up the cable car leading to the labs. If she hadn't cared, maybe she would've been on that car, long gone by the time he'd bled out.

He didn't want to think about it anymore. Ada Wong was dead. And even if she wasn't, she was better left that way in Leon's mind. It was too complicated and her business crossed lines Leon didn't think he wanted to be a part of.

Not to mention, there was more to worry about now. Claire and Sherry and the three of them getting away from Raccoon until they were miles and miles away, back to civilization.

He turned around, not having noticed how far he'd walked away from the motel's parameter. He spotted a large rock ahead and found sturdy footing to climb on. On top of the rock, he sat down, and fiddled with the radio some more. The voice started to sound a bit clearer.

_“Bzzzt – if you can hear – need to – out of the area – going to – sterilize with – issiles –”_

He finally recognized the voice and it made Leon feel sick to his stomach.

Pressing down the broadcast button on the radio, he could only weakly ask back, “ _Ada?”_

The radio offered an eerie silence in return. He held his breath and began to suspect that he really was losing his mind, hearing things because he was sick and needed treatment. Or maybe he was still dreaming, laying in bed, about to wake up at any moment if he could just pull himself out of it.

Then, just as he was starting to give up, the radio buzzed back to life and he heard her voice again. Unmistakable this time.

_“Bzzzt – it's not safe – as far away from Raccoon as you – bzzzt – they're planning to use missiles to wipe – ear this you're still in the blast zone – go now, Leon, before daybre – bzzzt –”_

_Before... daybreak?_

“Ada, wait! You're breaking up! Where are you?!” He spoke too fast, stumbling over his words as he yelled into the radio. White noise answered him and fizzled into nothingness. He waited five minutes... and then ten. Twenty minutes. “Ada?”

He was cold and the wind began to pick up. She was gone.

Missiles. She'd said they were going to use missiles. Who had she meant? Umbrella? The military? And that was their plan? To completely wipe any evidence of Raccoon existing off the map?

Leon slid off the rock and with his whole body feeling like it was covered in pins and needles, hot and cold at the same time, he ran as fast as he could back to the motel. He reached the door and spun the knob, pushing himself inside room seven, nearly collapsing on to the floor when he'd made it.

He rushed over to Claire's side, unsure how to wake her in any other way but rudely in their current situation. “Claire,” he called out, voice strained and just above a whisper. “Claire, we have to go.”

She stirred and her eyebrows squeezed together as if she were annoyed at being disturbed from her sleep. Leon placed his hand on her bare shoulder and shook it, giving up entirely at waking her with just his voice. Her eyes snapped open and she pushed herself up, raising her hands in defense as if she were being attacked. When she caught her breath and saw Leon above her, she dropped her guard.

“Leon? What's... what's going on? Are you okay?” her voice was confused. She spun around to check on Sherry and then looked back to Leon, rising up from the bed on to the tired soles of her feet. She readjusted her tank top, brushing it back down when she saw it was riding up a bit and exposing her stomach. “Leon?”

Leon began to speak but suddenly felt his legs give out beneath him. He'd pushed himself too hard and started to fall. Claire reached out and tried to catch him but she hadn't been fast enough and with her body still tired, the two of them both landed on their knees in a half-embrace.

“We have to get out of here, Claire,” he told her as she tried to help him to his feet and over to his bed. “Ada's still alive. I think she was trying to warn me. I couldn't hear everything, she wasn't coming in clearly, but I think she was trying to tell me missiles were coming; that we were in danger, still in the blast zone.”

“What the hell does that mean? Some asshole's going to nuke the city?” Claire asked, her hands noticing that his clothes and skin felt chilly compared to the rest of the warm surfaces in the motel room. Had he been outside? “What about Ada? Is she okay? Did she get out?”

“She didn't say,” he confessed, sorrowfully. “I tried to respond to her but I don't know if she could hear me.”

“I'm sorry, Leon.” Claire hoped that Ada was already on her way out of the city as well for his sake. With the kicked-puppy look that had been mostly permanent on his clean cut face for a majority of their trip, Claire didn't think he could handle anymore guilt stacked on his shoulders. Regardless of the fact that Ada had lied about her occupation and was involved in some scummy dealings, it didn't seem like she was entirely heartless. She had probably just saved their lives. No wonder Leon still had some feelings left for her. "Maybe we can try to find her when we get out of here."

“It doesn't matter anymore,” he brushed it off, trying to put his worry for Ada out of his mind and instead focus on his present company. “We've got until daybreak; that's our deadline.”

 _Literally_ , he morbidly thought to himself.

“Okay, so we take one of those cars out front and we start driving. We get far away enough and then what?” Claire thought about the motel owner. She thought about trying to warn him and if he'd really believe them. There was no way he could still make a fuss over stealing a car after hearing that kind of news. “You have any family or friends nearby that we could stay with?”

“They're all out of state, up northeast in Massachusetts,” Leon answered, frowning and moving his eyes to the side to look toward Sherry's sleeping form. He began to wonder if Sherry had relatives and if they would be worried about her if they spirited her away to parts unknown. “And my apartment I haven't even moved into yet is about to be leveled to the ground with the rest of the neighborhood.”

“My campus is a few hours away, but I don't think I'd be able to hide you two there,” Claire mused, wondering if her roommate and best friend, Elza, was getting worried. She'd call her to catch her up on the situation when she could. “I guess we'll just have to find a different hotel to squat in until we figure things out.”

“W-what are you guys talking about?” Sherry's little voice interrupted the conversation and she rose up from the pile of pillows and blankets she'd made around herself. She rubbed her eyes with balled up fingers and yawned innocently. “Is it time to go now?”

“Sherry,” Claire put on a trying smile to greet her and beckoned for her to come closer. The girl scooted forward and groggily sat beside Claire. “We were just trying to figure out what to do next.”

“What time is it?” she yawned again, looking over to the window and barely seeing the darkness of the night past the window blinds.

“Sherry, you have everything you need? We're gonna get a move on in a bit,” Claire warned her, standing up and pointing to Sherry's shoes on the ground. Claire grabbed the remaining water and food in the bag on the counter top across from the beds and looped the handle around her arm like a satchel. “How does a car ride sound?”

“Okay, I guess,” Sherry replied, suspicion clear in her voice. “Did something bad happen?”

Leon and Claire locked eyes with each other and both looked like they wanted to speak. Leon finally broke the news. “We're in danger. We need to away from the city, fast.”

The young girl scrambled off the bed and wrangled up her shoes and Claire's jacket without a word, putting them on as fast as she could. She checked the knife Claire had given her earlier to make sure it was still snug against her thigh. Leon popped a few more painkillers and chugged them down with water before the three of them gathered around the door, ready to go. Claire hit the light switch as they briskly walked out of the room and toward the abandoned vehicles in the lot.

“How are we going to do this?” Claire spoke up, unsure of how they were going to even start one of the cars up. Hot wiring a car was not on her list of skills she'd picked up from Chris over the years. She didn't think they were going to be able to dig up a key fast enough either. Breaking down the hotel doors one at a time would likely be time consuming and unfruitful. She gestured to Leon. “You wouldn't happen to know how to –”

Before she could finish, Leon gave her a _'really?'_ look and shook his head. “Steal a car? I was a boy scout. Never got into any situations where I'd need to start a car without the key.”

“Of course not,” Claire mumbled under her breath. Then she stared over at room 02 where the motel owner had to still be shacked up, waiting for his family to come back or the military to roll in or both. She sighed and looked toward Leon and Sherry and then said, “You two wait here. I'll be right back.”

The two of them looked at her, slightly confused but they didn't protest and she marched across the lot to their host's door and knocked hard, hoping he was in there and would answer promptly. She bounced her feet slightly in her boots as she waited impatiently until the man finally opened the door, shotgun clutched tightly in his grip. When he got a look at her through the crack in the door, he lowered the gun and peered down the bridge of his nose, as if waiting for her to speak first.

“I'm sorry to bother you but I don't think help is coming,” she started, drawing in a long breath before breaking the bad news to him. “We heard over our radio; they're planning to drop missiles on Raccoon City and the surrounding area. It's not safe here anymore so we're going to get going and I thought I should let you know that you should probably do the same...”

"Your radio? You've got a radio? ” The man leaned forward and opened the door wider. He caught sight of Leon and Sherry standing in the parking lot, distantly looking at him with curiosity. “Who'd you hear that from? The military?”

Claire hesitated to answer truthfully. “Whoever it was sounded pretty official,” she finally said, hoping he'd believe that white lie more than _'my friend's acquaintance I've never met that he thought was dead somehow radioed him and gave him that information and we don't know how she figured that out but just trust us.'_ “They said we have until daylight to clear out of here. I think we'd better listen.”

The man was quiet and then slowly nodded, seemingly agreeing with Claire's reasoning. He turned back toward his room, looking over his meager possessions while he spoke, “Guess I knew they weren't going to come for someone like me.”

“Our only chance of making it out of here fast enough is in one of those cars. I know you said you didn't want us to touch them but I think the situation's a little different...”

“S'fine,” he mumbled, his voice stoic and emotionless. “The owners are all probably dead anyway. Who am I kidding, trying to put my virtues before survival?”

“I'm sorry,” Claire apologized, feeling as if she'd broken the last of the man's spirit by warning him of the incoming threat. His shoulders simply lowered and his stature seemed to shrink. Then, it finally hit him that she'd never asked for his name. “If we can figure out how to get one of these things started without the keys, you're more than welcome to come with us, Mr. uhhh...”

“Reeves. Fred Reeves.” He stepped out of the doorway and immediately made a bee-line over to the nearest car. Claire raised her brows in surprise and watched as Fred Reeves shattered open the window of the driver's side door using the stock of his gun and cleared away the shards from the edges. As he reached inside to unlock the door, Claire waved over Leon and Sherry.

“You got a place to go?” Fred asked, opening the door and leaning inside. Claire and Leon looked at each other, eyes wide with uncertainty. Leon began to open his mouth and hesitated before Fred cut him off with, “I'll take that as a no.”

He positioned himself under the wheel and smashed the panel off a compartment beneath it with the butt of his shotgun until it shattered and came away easily. His hand yanked wires out of the compartment and he set to work, almost like he'd done it before, hundreds of times. He didn't look up as he talked.

“Lisa and Denny,” he began, “they were my everything. Lisa's the one who got me to go legit, runnin' a business like this and making money the honest way. After we had Denny, I wanted to be a better man. I promised I wouldn't steal or deal ever again. And I didn't. For nearly twenty years.”

“That's honorable, but I'm sure your family would've wanted you to get somewhere safe,” Leon replied, remembering what Claire had told him about the man and his family over their meal earlier. 

“If I'd have left earlier, I wouldn't be here helping you fine folk get the hell out of dodge,” Fred gave a laugh that sounded slightly off-kilter. “Funny how things work out like that.”

He pressed two of the wires he'd stripped together and sparks met between the frayed bits. He quickly bent the wires together so they'd stay connected. The car's engine revved up and came to life. Fred gave a high whistle and scooted out of the way of the seat, wiping his hands off on the back of his blue jeans.

“You did it!” Sherry cheered, beaming a smile at Fred and jumping up and down happily. Claire passed a smile of her own at Fred also, hers more reserved and sorrowful.

“That should hold for a while. If you need to stop, you should probably put it in park. And if you absolutely need to cut the power, pull those wires apart. Watch your fingers though, those things are live and they'll get'cha good if you're not careful.”

“Wait,” Claire started, realizing where the conversation was headed, “You're not coming with us? We have room.”

Fred gave a low, breathy chuckle and lowered his head. “I think the real reason I didn't wanna leave this place is because I ain't got the motivation to start fresh. Life without my Lisa and Denny just ain't one worth living.”

Leon understood and he put his good hand on Fred's shoulder, a gesture of thanks and an offer of sympathy all at once. “Thank you,” he spoke earnestly. Fred nodded in return. Then, with that, he silently turned back toward his lonely motel room, shotgun loosely held in his hand, where he retreated behind the door and shut it behind him. Claire felt a pit forming in her stomach.

“Let's go,” Leon moved over to the driver's door and started to lower himself into the seat before Claire hovered over him disapprovingly. It had mostly been out of habit since he hated being the passenger in car rides. It made him feel anxious; like he had no control of the situation.

“You planning on steering one-handed? How about I drive, hot shot? You look like hell and could probably use the rest,” she reminded him. He surrendered, holding up his hand in defeat and backing away at her suggestion. He moved around over to the passenger's side while Sherry climbed into the back and buckled herself into the middle seat. The four-door sedan wasn't the heftiest or fastest looking car but it was their only shot. Claire shut the door and slung the bags of leftover food and water in the backseat by Sherry's feet. Leon gave her a thumbs up once he was situated and she pulled the lever out of park.

She hadn't driven a car for a year or so, not since she'd gotten her motorcycle license. She'd been in love with the Night Train she'd bought and hadn't felt it was necessary to own two vehicles. It took her a second to conjure up from the back of her mind how to shift into the appropriate gears and without looking, she could feel Leon's eyes boring into the side of her head as if he was judging her.

“You sure you don't want me to drive?” He asked, less as a joke and more out of concern. She inhaled deeply to keep cool-headed and finally got the car moving after a second or two of timing errors with the clutch pedal. She shot a smirking side-glance in Leon's direction as if to say _'see? I've got this'_ and then focused on backing out of the lot. As she looked out the rear view window, she gave Fred's door one last look. She realized she'd never told him her name. She wasn't the most religious person but she hoped for his sake there was some sort of afterlife where he'd be able to see his family again.

“Hold on to your seats,” she warned the two of them, preparing for the ride ahead. “This might be a bumpy ride.”

Sherry literally grabbed the edge of her seat, squeezing the worn fabric of the cushion until her knuckles turned white. Claire took the car out of reverse and drove out of the parking lot, rolling down her window to kick out the stale air inside. The road stretched out ahead of them and she sped up, giving one last silent thought of gratitude to Mr. Reeves for saving them.

Leon rubbed his shoulder and stared at the side-view mirror, watching as the motel's shape grew smaller and smaller, until it was no more and disappeared on the horizon behind them. There was no turning back now. He hoped they would be able to make it.


	6. Burn Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided to split the chapter I was working on into two chapters, mainly because it's taking me forever to figure out the second half and I didn't want to take too long. Sorry for the wait and that's why this one is a little shorter than the last two!

It was hard not to think about impending doom raining down upon them at any moment as they sped down the dark road toward sanctuary. Claire checked the rear view mirror every so often, expecting to see the tell tale lights flaring across the sky, leaving trails of red ember in their wake. The sun hadn't peeked over the horizon yet though; she had to believe they had more time.

With everyone on edge, the three of them had grown silent. In turn, it was starting to make Claire more nervous and so she'd absentmindedly flicked on the car radio in an attempt to try to make things seem more normal again.

She fiddled with the radio's dial until a station finally tuned in; a man with a scratchy, deep voice singing along with grungy rock guitars wailing in the background. She couldn't quite catch the lyrics, but it sounded like typical radio fare and grounded her nerves, reminding her of any other completely normal car ride she'd been on before. After a moment or two, Leon leaned his good hand out toward the radio dial. Out of the corner of her eye, Claire couldn't quite see what he was doing but she was quick to guess he wasn't happy with her choice in music and probably about to switch the station to something less abrasive or maybe just shut it off entirely. Claire braced herself, hoping whatever he chose wasn't going to give her a headache instead.

She was pleasantly surprised when instead she heard the music get a bit louder. He was turning it up. Leon pulled his hand away and lightly tapped his knee with the beat. “Think I heard these guys on my way here too,” he mused, sounding strangely casual about the whole thing. “I've been meaning to grab this CD since it came out but haven't had the time with my job starting and moving and... I mean, everything.”

There was a brief pause and he sighed. “I'm gonna have to get a new stereo.”

“Wow, _Officer Kennedy_. Didn't have you pegged as a grunge kind of guy,” Claire smirked, her mind happily ignoring their predicament in place of genuine human conversation. It had been awfully strange- she'd been around Leon for almost two whole days and yet, she still didn't know a damn thing about him. Maybe part of her had been worried that below the surface of their shared traumas from Raccoon, there might not be many common interests and it would make their journey strained and relationship rocky. But she was also curious to learn if there were more surprises underneath the well-adjusted, clean cut rookie cop exterior now that he'd revealed his musical tastes.

“Yeah?” He stared out his window, watching the passing trees and landmarks fly by into the shadows behind the headlights, brows arching hard at her remark. “Okay, now I'm curious. What kind of music did you think I listened to?”

“You're going to kill me but... like, the kind of tacky stuff you'd hear playing on the radio at the mall. Safe music?” She didn't want to outright insult him by saying 'lame music' but she felt she'd done worse somehow. “Sorry, no offense,” she added on after, as if trying to smooth over the slight burn.

“Ouch, that bad, huh?” Leon took it in good stride, even chuckling a bit under his breath. “And what about you? Are you a fan of stuff like this?”

“Sometimes. Depends on my mood,” Claire answered, thinking to herself how she didn't know the name of the band playing or even the song name. She'd probably heard it several times on the radio and it was just a nice familiarity that reminded her of life before Chris stopped calling and Raccoon dropped into her lap. “I like a little of everything honestly.”

“Everything? Even MC Hammer?” Leon sarcastically quipped.

“Fine, maybe not _everything_.” She let out a low laugh. “I was just kind of raised to appreciate a bunch of music. My dad was a musician. He played the guitar in a band and sang too. He always had all sorts of records from a bunch of different places. Even some really eclectic stuff.”

“Is there anyone in your family that isn't awesome?” Leon remarked, mentally tallying up how many times she'd mentioned her bad ass brother Chris. “What about your mother? What does she do?”

“She was a bartender. That's actually how my parents met. My mom saw his band play at a bar when they were younger and she went head over heels for him. At least, that's how Chris told it to me.” Her smile faded a bit and she became reserved, focusing her eyes on the road ahead. A minute passed and Leon watched her open and close her mouth several times, as if she were trying to find the right words. “Chris started trying to learn the guitar after our parents died. He thought he could join a band too and make some money that way... but he didn't know the first thing about song writing and he couldn't carry a tune to save his life. When things started to get tight and he was scared they were going to split us up– put me in foster care– he decided to join the air force so he could support us both. It wasn't really what he wanted, but he was trying to do right by us.”

Leon's face grew somber and he drew in a breath. “I'm sorry, I- I didn't know–“

“It's fine,” Claire butted in, trying not to kill the mood, “It's okay. It happened a long time ago.”

Claire adjusted the rear view mirror to check on Sherry. The girl laid across the back seat, small hands balled up beside her sleeping face. She'd likely still been exhausted from waking up so suddenly before. _Poor kid_ , Claire thought to herself.

Leon caught her gazing into the mirror. He looked over the shoulder of his seat and saw the same scene she had. “Maybe I should turn the music down,” he whispered, still feeling as if he should tread on eggshells with his words. Claire nodded and tightened her grip on the wheel, hoping to see a marker of their safety soon.

He leaned forward and turned down the music just as the first glimmer of hazy red light began to poke out from behind the clouds. Leon had imagined his last few days so differently at the beginning of the week. He'd thought by now he'd be settled into his apartment, waking up at the crack of dawn, brewing a pot of coffee, showering before his second day shift. He imagined walking into the RPD and waving at the reception desk, giving them a cordial 'good morning' and then entering the west office where Marvin and the others would be starting their work. With only names from the desks to go off of, his imagination filled in the faces of his co-workers; clean, human versions of zombies he'd encountered. He pictured a man with a large push-broom mustache holding out a styrofoam cup with coffee and a beaming woman with a professional looking bob cut offering him a doughnut. Maybe they'd make a joke about it and they'd all laugh. Marvin would probably laugh too and then tell them all to get to work before Irons had them fired for their bad senses of humor.

But as his fantasy played out in his mind, it was hard to imagine the halls of the RPD without blood and gore painted across the surfaces. He tried to picture how bright and welcoming it was supposed to be. But... he couldn't. His mind was too worn out. Eventually, he could only see the faces of the dead and damned, reaching out for him with vacant eyes, gurgling and choking on their own viscera. He remembered teeth gnashing as one of them took hold of him and pulled him in, closer and closer, his neck right beneath its putrid breath wet against his skin. He shook himself out of the memory and grabbed at his neck, feeling no wounds or flesh out of place. Only cold sweat.

“I kept thinking I was going to die back there,” Leon muttered, watching out the windshield as they passed a mile marker and a sign stating Old Court was further ahead. Claire didn't say anything back but swallowed hard, feeling like she'd soured the car ride with a depressing aura.

“A few times, I was surrounded or I encountered something I didn't think I'd be able to get around. I didn't give up, but I'd always have a flash feeling in the back of my mind,” he began to ramble, letting it all come pouring out, “I hated it, but I couldn't help it. I kept thinking to myself how I hadn't done anything significant or amazing; how I'd lived this bland, unremarkable life. My dad sells insurance and my mom wanted me to work with him in a nice, safe job. She wanted me to settle down early and get married and have kids. I almost did, but... then I'd always see these stories in the news about all this bullshit happening around my perfect little bubble. It just made me so _angry_ that all these people should suffer or go through injustice while I barely had to work for anything. And I couldn't take it.”

“I turned down my dad's offer and set my mind on being a cop. My parents didn't think I had it in me; _Leon Scott Kennedy, straight A student, chess club geek._ Well, I went to the academy and worked my ass off to graduate.” He remembered beginning a daily regimen, working out and pushing himself to the limits to make sure he could handle whatever was thrown at him. He'd taken his firearm training very seriously and had even learned how to properly disassemble and clean several standard issue models. He recalled how he'd done research, opting to purchase a Matilda over newer, less problematic models because of its sleek size and modular upgrade capabilities. “When I applied to work in Raccoon, I thought I was finally going to get my chance to show everyone that I could pitch in and make a difference. I'd heard about the murders in the Arklay Mountains and had all these stupid dreams of finding something other guys glossed over or confronting the killers face to face during a beat and having a chance to save lives.”

“Leon...” Claire started, unsure of what to do or say.

“And then I got a call to stay away? I thought that was it– that was my chance. That if I showed up in Raccoon, I'd get there, just in time to make a difference or save someone's life.” Leon faltered, suddenly feeling as if he were about to rip a band aid off, exposing a gristly wound that had been festering beneath the surface. “But part of me isn't so sure I was doing it entirely for unselfish reasons. I was in such a damn hurry to make myself feel like I mattered. I wanted to change someone's life, be someone's hero.

"And in those moments, looking death in the face, I was thinking: 'If I die here, will anyone remember me? Will anyone mourn me? Or am I just some dumb asshole who got himself into something too big to handle?' And I didn't have an answer. It scared me shitless but it kept me going. I couldn't die there- alone.”

"I'm glad you made it," Claire said, realizing how much worse it must've felt to have parents who were alive but didn't believe in his dreams.

"I guess what I was trying to say was that Chris probably depends on you just as much as you depend on him. I bet you mean the world to him and whatever path he chose in life isn't some sort of sacrifice in his eyes. If I'd had a sister like you, looking up to me, I probably wouldn't constantly be trying to prove my self-worth all the time."

As the two of them sat in silence, soaking in Leon's words, bright lights appeared in the distance, on the road, miles ahead. Claire was the first one to spot it and she gasped, pointing ahead. “ _Oh fuck_ , is that– ?”

“... a roadblock?” Leon finished her sentence, weariness laced in every syllable. As they sped closer to it, a helicopter flew overhead, circling the vicinity. It then hovered low, finding a clearing by the lights and military vehicles ahead, and touched down for landing. A few other cars were stopped on the other side of the roadblock and military personnel stood guard, waving back anyone looking to cross the barricades set up in the middle of the paved road, alongside large armored trucks.

“What do we do?” Claire said, hitting the break and slowing down to a crawling lurch. She turned to Leon who met her eyes and furrowed his brows. Her earlier fears of being quarantined and separated from Sherry came creeping back into the forefront of her mind. “Can we trust them? Are they going to let us pass?”

“Damn it,” Leon spat out, wishing Ada'd given him more to work with. The fact that he didn't know what to do drove him mad and his arm began to ache again with more tenacity and pain than before.

“What if we turn off the road? We could get out on foot and try going around it,” Claire looked back toward Sherry who was still fast asleep in the back seat. They would have to wake her up any moment now.

“No way, it's too risky,” Leon answered. “What if they have defenses set up around the perimeter, in case those monsters try getting out? It's not like those things will be sticking to the roads if they show up.”

“They wouldn't shoot us though,” Claire incredulously laughed. “Don't you think they'd be able to tell we're human? At least if we try sneaking through, there's a chance we don't have to deal with these assholes at all.”

“Trust me,” Leon gulped, knowing all too well how the outcome would be, “I think it'd be easier for them to shoot us and get away with it. I don't think Umbrella's taking any chances. At least if we go through the front door, they have to play nice and put on their best face. What do you want to bet they've got press lurking around, trying to get a scoop? They aren't going to kill us in public.”

“I don't like any of these options,” Claire pulled the parking break and stopped the car. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, hoping to recollect herself and hold on to her sanity just a little longer. “And I don't want us to get separated. Not again. I promised Sherry I wouldn't let that happen.”

“So we won't,” Leon put his hand on her shoulder and her eyes opened. She looked back at him and tried to smile. “No matter what happens in there, we stay together. We've been through worse. I think we can make it through this. We have to.”

“You're right,” Claire nodded. Maybe things would be fine. The military blockade wasn't a giant, four-armed freak with claws and pulsating, inhuman organs on the outside of their body after all, and she'd already somehow been able to tackle that problem head on with flying colors. Maybe she'd surprise herself again.

She turned around to wake Sherry up while Leon checked his gun, one more time.


	7. Stand Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was a chapter I struggled with for a while. It's still not perfect and sort of messy but I'm going to post it and try to move the story along. Hopefully the next chapter will be meatier with character development. Thank you to anyone who is still taking the time to read this. All your comments have been so lovely and sweet. <3

Claire had completely cut the power to the car. She thought of Mr. Reeves one last time, hoping his final moments weren't painful ones. The meager bag of food and water she'd managed to take with them probably wouldn't make it past the checkpoint but she'd grabbed it out of the back seat anyway. It was all they had left of the motel and carrying it with her was the only way to convince herself that they'd really been there and that she hadn't been dreaming.

Sherry stood beside Claire, clasping her hand tightly. She had slunk back into the red jacket and its bulky form draped over her body like protective armor, shielding her from the crisp morning air. Her hair was still partially braided but messy from sleeping in it; stray wisps of blond blew every which way. Her hand hovered over her chest for a moment, reaching for a locket that wasn't there and she gave a small sad sigh and squeezed Claire's hand tighter.

On the other side of Sherry, Leon stood, holding his shoulder with a vice grip. The pain was excruciating, but he would have to hold it at bay, just a little longer. His inner voice was telling him that if he failed Claire and Sherry now, he would've been better off left for dead in the motel, along with Fred Reeves and the rest of the necropolis. Raccoon had chewed him up and spit him out and he was still alive and he had to see it through to the end– no throwing in the towel. Sweat beads ran down his temples and he gave a glance to Claire as if to signal that he was ready.

She nodded in return.

The military barricade was close but every step they took toward it felt like an eternity. Leon's feet began to feel like they were lined with lead weights. His calves burned and his muscles ached with every step. The steady rhythm of the three of them walking in unison carried him forward, instructing him and guiding him onward to the barricade. Soon enough, they were well within distance of the armed men, where the floodlights trained their beams on the paved road, creating a space of clarity, and they approached with caution.

Claire stretched out her arm, signaling for the other two to stay back. Sherry curled her arms into her chest, visibly distressed by Claire's direction. Leon shot a glance to Claire and shook his head, not satisfied with that order. He stepped forward with her, positioning himself in front of Sherry, guarding her from the sight of the soldiers.

As their feet met the floodlight beams towering from above, the soldiers all jumped to action, reacting and snapping into a readied-weapon response. The simultaneous clicking of safeties being released sent a shiver down Claire's spine. One of the armed men spoke with a domineering voice from behind a sandbag stack.

“Freeze! Put your hands above your head!”

Leon wearily raised his one good arm while Claire perfectly executed the order, keeping both arms high above her head. The two of them didn't risk moving a muscle while they waited for a response. Sherry was breathing heavy behind them and Claire could hear her frantically repeating under her breath, _“Oh god, oh god, please let us go...”_

The guns stayed firmly trained on them and the growing silence caused Claire's heart to start pounding harder and harder.

“Where did you come from?” The question. It seared into her mind like a red-hot sizzling brand being pressed into Claire's side.

Leon was about to speak when she mustered up her calmest voice and spoke matter-of-factually, staring right back into the soldier's dark eyes with fiery, brave intensity. “Raccoon.”

The guns didn't budge. Her body began to tighten, feeling as if her limbs were going to be torn to shreds with bullets at any moment. Leon grunted and sucked in air through his grit teeth. His arm raised over his head was tremoring and Claire looked over to see that his bandage was starting to soak with blood again.

“Did you come in contact with any infected individuals or wildlife?” Claire's breathing became shaky and she took one deep breath to settle her nerves. She didn't know whether to answer honestly or not. One wrong move and the blood of not only herself but Leon and Sherry would be on her hands.

“We haven't been bitten!” Leon rapidly answered in her stead with a steely gaze. His face looked strained and Claire's heart ached for him as she watched him silently suffering for their sake. Then more floodlights moved and highlighted their figures, blinding them with an unnatural light and causing Claire's eyes to water.

“You have been injured.” The voice sounded less and less humane the more it spoke, as if it were reading its lines emotionlessly off of a page. Leon dipped his head in anger and nodded, his neck muscles stiff. He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to stave off the sweltering pain traveling up his side. “You run the risk of infection. What is the nature of your injury?”

Claire couldn't take it anymore. “We aren't infected! He was shot! He's in pain and he needs medical attention now!”

Whipping his head in Claire's direction, Leon's brows slanted with rigid uneasiness, his worry for her increasing ten-fold. He didn't want all the pressure focused on her and burst out too. “I'm a cop, _god damn it_! We aren't a threat! Let us through!”

The soldier in charge gripped his rifle tighter. “What about the girl?”

Sherry felt a chill down her spine as the man asked about her. Her breathing became heavy and she struggled to move her feet forward she was shaking so much. Claire and Leon didn't budge, still trying to keep themselves in front of her to shield her from view. Leon could see the soldier touching his ear and instantly recognized it as him receiving a transmission in an earpiece. His lips moved... he was talking to someone. And then–

“Is the girl infected?” The soldier's emotions were starting to bleed into his words. He was impatient.

“No!” Claire said, truthfully. _Not anymore_ , she thought. Sherry tried to whisper to Claire but she couldn't find her voice. She muttered a few times but Claire couldn't hear her.

“Show us.” The soldier was firm in his order and the guns were still trained and ready to fire. Leon and Claire looked back at Sherry and nervously thought to themselves how they were going to keep her safe. Grabbing on the edges of the sleeves of Claire's coat, Sherry took a long, shaky breath and let it out.

She couldn't let them die... she'd only just met them and they were her only friends.

The lack of a response angered the soldier and his men and the second time around, he was less pleasant. “I'm giving you a _warning_. Show us the girl.”

Time seemed to slow down as Claire panicked, thinking of all the possible outcomes. Only one thing was certain; she had to keep Sherry safe. No matter what. Even if it meant giving her life.

“Sherry,” she whispered to the girl, speaking so fast her words were stumbling over one another, “You have to run... you have to go. I'm going to distract them and I want you to go hide and find a place to stay until it's safe to come out...”

“Claire–“ Sherry started before Leon cut in.

“No way, that's bullshit. We have to listen to them. If she tries to run...” he trailed off and didn't finish, but Claire understood perfectly what he had meant to say. Her plan was a stupid one, she agreed, but she didn't trust the soldiers and she definitely didn't like sending Sherry out of their reach in front of several armed soldiers. The young girl had already been through enough trauma and she'd probably already need therapy without adding more horrifying nightmares to her memories.

“You have five seconds.” The soldier called out, having decided he'd had enough of their hesitation. “ _Five_.”

“Claire, we should just go along with it for now,” Leon pleaded, sounding as if he had been drained of all of his piss and vinegar and needed rest, direly.

“ _Four_.”

“So maybe they run tests on us and keep us locked up... whatever they do,” Leon grit his teeth, hating what he was saying but trying to convince her not to make any sudden sacrifices, “whatever the worst of it is, it will give us more time to figure things out than getting shot, right here, right now.”

“ _Three_.”

“Sherry, you don't have to–“ Claire told her, not wanting to force her to do anything she wasn't ready to do.

“ _Two_.”

“I'm sorry,” Sherry said with the smallest voice, giving Leon and Claire both an apologizing look. Claire nodded her head, thinking that she'd decided to stay and she felt the gun weighing against her thigh holster, ready for her to pull it out and give Sherry a diversion. Leon wasn't angry with either of them and most of all, he didn't blame Sherry for being scared...

“ _One_.”

“Wait!” Sherry cried out, squeezing herself between Leon and Claire and pushing out in front of them. She held her arms up above her head and stood her ground. “Don't hurt them! I'll come!”

The soldier in charge didn't budge for a while and then as if a switch had been flicked, he motioned toward two other nearby men to be waved in and approach the group of three on the road. The two other soldiers kept their rifles aimed ahead and shuffled in, hunched and heavy footed. The stopped in front of Sherry. One of them lowered his rifle while the other one turned his aim toward Leon and Claire. “Sir, we have a confirmation,” the one in front of Sherry said, speaking into his radio. Sherry looked confused, wondering how they'd checked her so fast for infection.

She had been expecting a doctor to look her over but she was semi-glad that she didn't have to get pricked with any needles or prodded with cold instruments.

Claire and Leon's faces seemed to grow a bit lighter, thinking that maybe they were going to be okay after all. Then, the soldier in front of Sherry grabbed her arm. “We have orders to take this girl into our custody. She'll be under the protection of the U.S. Government.”

Within seconds, Leon and Claire's faces did a complete reversal, wide eyes and furrowed brows shooting angered looks at the soldiers. “No! You can't take her!” Claire yelled out, infuriated that they'd even come to the checkpoint. “She stays with us! We're...”

“...her family!” Leon finished, trying to keep a cool head. “We're all she's got. Have a heart.”

“Orders are orders,” the soldier gripping Sherry said, looking over to his partner with the gun trained on the two of them still. “Don't worry, we're taking you in too.”

“Why?! What have we done?” Claire couldn't control her rage. “You can't lock us up! We're innocent! She's innocent!”

“We don't know that yet,” he simply said back, pulling Sherry away from Leon and Claire.

“Claire!” Sherry cried out, confused as to what was happening. She tried to pull away from the soldier but his hand was too strong. Her sneakers skidded across the pavement as she tried to stop moving and stay with Leon and Claire. “I don't want to leave them! I don't want to go! Let me say good-bye! Claire!”

With a heavy heart and a face as furious as could be, Claire cried back, “Sherry! Hold on, I promise I'll find you!”

Leon's face stayed just as angry and pained, and yet, he wondered if it had anything to do with Sherry's parents being criminal scientists and key players in the Raccoon outbreak. When Sherry was out of sight, behind the barricades and fencing, the second soldier with the gun who stayed with them grunted to get their attention.

“Walk in front of me. Slowly. Move.” He nudged his gun in the direction of the roadblock, toward the other armed guards. Claire moved first and then Leon limped along behind her with his good arm still raised, wanting desperately to grab his wound and stop the pain. The makeshift sling was coming loose and he thought he could feel his scab tearing more and more. They were stopped and frisked and their weapons and equipment were confiscated and soon they were herded beyond where several tents and nondescript buildings were set up with military vehicles surrounding them.

From behind them, the footsteps of the soldier were in perfect rhythm, not too fast and not too slow. Leon had lagged behind Claire a little bit and the soldier had slowed his pace to match his. “This one,” he directed them toward a concrete building with a gated area and several crates and drums beside it. They stepped through and into a wide area of operations with branching halls. It was roomier and larger inside than it had looked outside.

Claire looked around frantically for Sherry but she had a feeling they'd taken her to another location. She couldn't stop blaming herself and felt she could've done more or said something else to make them change their minds. She wanted to tear countless assholes apart until one of them let Sherry go.

They passed by a group of suited men, along with more soldiers and a decorated gentleman in uniform hovering around a large table. Radios and machinery were setup on the walls, being manned by operators.

Leon lingered a glance toward one of the suited men for a moment too long and the soldier behind him pressed his gun into Leon's back, reminding him to keep moving. They were guided through one of the branching doorways into a long narrow path that led to barred cells at the end of it. The soldier commanded them to stop and then opened one of the cells and held the door wide.

He eyed Claire first. “Inside. Now.”

She stood there, nearly snarling. Leon put a hand on her back, trying to comfort her about their situation. With a hard swallow in her throat, she hesitantly stepped through the open door and stopped when she had passed through, turning to instantly give the soldier a dirty look. “Fuck you.”

The soldier didn't seem to care about her colorful language. Then he turned to Leon. “You too.”

Leon stepped in easier than Claire had and joined her inside the cell. When he had cleared the doorway, the guard shut the door promptly and locked it sturdily. He took an extra moment to look over them, intimidating them with a “don't try anything” look.

Then he skulked away with his rifle in hand, back down the narrow path and likely right outside the entryway. From inside the cell, Claire could hear a helicopter passing the building overhead and a distant crowd, gasping and buzzing.

Leon was the first to collapse to the ground and he clutched at his injury on his knees. Claire threw herself on the floor beside him and pressed her hand against his forehead, checking for a fever. He groaned and grunted in pain and started to fall closer to the ground, shoulder first.

“Oh god,” Claire let out, trying to pull him back up but only pulling him on to her lap. She cradled his head as he writhed in pain and seethed between his teeth. She pressed her palm over his hand, adding extra pressure to the bleeding bullet wound and looked out of the bars of the cell, wondering why no one was sending a medic to check them over.

“Hey!” Claire yelled, frustrated. “We need help! He needs a doctor! Somebody, come quick!”

“Don't...” Leon muttered, strained. Claire shook her head, ignoring his plea. She kept calling out for help, confident that someone would answer. They had to... or Leon was going to die.

“Goddamn it!” she yelled, her vision becoming watery. _First Sherry... and now Leon._ After everything Raccoon had thrown at her, being captured and treated like some stray animal left to rot in a cell was far more of a nightmare. She felt helpless and more vulnerable than before with none of her weapons or gear and no way to reach Chris or Elza or anyone she knew.

Leon's eyes closed and he became silent. Only the slow rise and fall of his chest let Claire know he was still alive, unconscious.

Now she felt truly alone. She sat there, wishing she had some way to help Leon and stabilize his wound but all of her medical supplies had been taken. Tearing strips of cloth from her shirt wouldn't have done much good either as they were still dirty from treading through the sewers. A low curse spat out of her mouth and her walls finally began to crumble from the weight of it all. Her shoulders sunk as she brushed Leon's hair out of his comatose face and she felt a tear roll down her cheek from her puffy, stinging eyes.

_What do I do now, Chris?_


	8. Broken Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead. Yet.

Claire's hand had grown tired of pressing down on Leon's wound; her joints ached to unfurl and be stretched out. Her legs had fallen asleep beneath the man's weight and lost feeling, instead being replaced with a tingling, pricking sensation in various patches of her muscles.

Leon's body lay limp and motionless, sleeping off the fatigue brought on by blood loss.

She was sure the wound had settled down and she'd likely stemmed the flow for the time being, but she was worried removing her hand would start the process a new. She also didn't dare move his body either; she didn't want him to stir in his sleep and writhe in pain again.

The single fluorescent bulb hanging directly outside the cell did a shoddy job of lighting their space. Her hand blended in with Leon's shoulder the same dark shade of blood as everything else around the entry point. It'd been nearly an hour since they'd been locked up, but she couldn't be sure as her wristwatch was too far from her face to make heads or tails of in the poor visibility. From down the hallway outside the bars, she could still hear chattering and the hum and whir of machinery. It had quieted down since they'd first arrived and she wondered if she would be able to hear the missiles when they finally landed upon Raccoon City.

 _If they actually exist_ , she reminded herself. Maybe it had just been another lie Ada had told to Leon to get him away from the city, Claire now knowing how stubborn he was. Or perhaps she'd done it to drive him right into the hands of the military with some sort of ulterior motive. Had she known about Sherry?

 _Claire, you don't even know her, why would she do that_ , she scolded herself, realizing she didn't have a damn clue what Ada's intentions had been and only had what Leon had told her to go off of. _You're tired and looking for someone to blame._

The fact that no one had come to check on them or give them a clue as to what they were being detained for frustrated Claire and left her anxious, alongside her sleep deprivation. She longed to be back in the dark, cramped hotel room, curled up beside Sherry and burrowed under blankets, sleeping peacefully once more.

_Sherry._

She replayed the girl's cries as she reached out toward her and Leon, clenching her hand to try to catch the air as if it would stop her from being dragged away. The memory of her upset yells and frantic objections haunted Claire, burning her face red hot with anger at the men who'd taken her away.

Every last one of those soldiers were on her shit list. She fumed about how they could even think to do that to a child; to aim guns at her and frighten her and whisk her away from people who cared about her without explaining why.

Claire tried to remind herself that Sherry was a strong girl and that she'd likely get through it, even if it pained Claire to think about. She'd already dealt with so much in such a short amount of time and had somehow come out stronger and more unflappable than Claire had hoped for.

“I'm sorry, Sherry,” she said aloud, hoping that maybe the young girl could hear her, where ever she was.

As she dipped her head downward to take another peek at Leon's wound, a shaking arm swung upward and clumsily met with her chin. The backside of Leon's fingers grazed against her and she felt her heart jump in her chest.

“... C-claire?” He muttered, sounding confused. His eyes were still closed but she could see him fluttering his lids, trying to open them weakly. “I... I can't move.”

“Leon,” she answered back, her voice sounding worn and ragged in return. “I tried to get you help, but no one's listening. Fucking bastards.” She spat out the last part like bitter spittle.

“Sherry,” he spoke, his voice tumbling over the vowels, “S-she's really gone, isn't she?”

“... Yes,” Claire confirmed, sucking in a shaky breath and nodding slightly. Her hand was burning from holding pressure down on Leon's shoulder and had become more and more of a struggle to keep in place now that she could visibly see her arm and wrist shaking. She gently peeled her hand away, relieving it of its duty and dry, crusted blood mixed with sticky, congealed fluid stuck to the skin in the crevices of her fingers. She balled up her fingers into a fist, pumping blood back into them, and it felt as if she'd just began using them for the first time in her life.

Leon's wound was still a dark, viscous color but didn't immediately begin to fill with gushing blood after she let go of it. It needed to be stitched up soon. If it wasn't infected before, it soon would be.

“I'm sorry,” Leon apologized, finally able to keep his eyes open. Claire could still make out their gray-blue shade in the dim light. “About Sherry. About everything.”

“You don't have to apologize, it's not your fault,” Claire replied, holding back the choking feeling in her throat. “If anyone should be sorry, it should be me. I couldn't even get you help. God, what a shit show this has all turned out to be.”

Leon clasped his shoulder briefly after the absence of Claire's hand, feeling the slick spot left behind, and then his fingers hovered beside it to where he'd tied his towel-sling. The knot had already started to come loose and even with his weak, trembling fingers, he had little trouble pulling it free.

“I need your help,” he said, looking up at her. With one eye squeezed shut from exertion, he started to pull himself up from Claire's lap and into a slumping seat beside her. Her hands pressed against his back, giving him a guiding push. She took the towel he'd released from his arm and looked at it, wishing she'd still had her knife and wondering if they'd taken it away from Sherry. Leon's raspy voice pulled her back into the present again. “It's bad, I know. Just... take off the bandage and... use the towel.”

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, eyeing the cell door, already coming up with ways to try to get help over again. She'd have to do something really drastic; maybe she'd start trying to damage the bars or shriek until her lungs gave out. _There's no way they could ignore that_ , she thought. _Though they might shoot me._

“Anything you do to me at this point can't hurt more than I already do now,” Leon grunted, leaning forward into his knees. Claire kneaded her hands into the folds of the towel and mustered up as much strength as she had left to start ripping the fabric into strips.

“You know,” she started, in between the sound of cotton fiber pulling apart violently, “you're lucky Mr. Reeves skimped out on the quality of this thing. My hands haven't been steady since the hotel.”

Leon gave the slightest of chuckles, really only a courteous acknowledgment since he was so tired and nothing about their situation screamed lucky to him. He'd showed up to a literal apocalyptic nightmare on his first day, had to kill his zombified boss, gotten shot, fought the giant, mutated husband of a psychotic scientist, been double-crossed and then nearly left for dead in a self-destructing underground lab, pummeled around by a master class asshole in a trench coat, found out missiles were headed toward them, been captured by the military, had a girl under his care taken away, and almost bled out. In fact, the only constant throughout his miserable past few days had been knowing that he could count on Claire to help him out.

And he was scared that too would soon be taken from him.

“Here,” Claire said, laying out the towel strips on the ground beside them. She hovered her hands above Leon's wound, mentally preparing herself in case anything went wrong. With trembling fingers, she slid her thumb under the wound bandage at a loose point, away from the bloodiest areas, and tugged gently, unraveling it from the wrap.

While she silently undid the cloth from his shoulder, he lifted his head drowsily to stare at her face while she worked. The meager light barely illuminated parts of her; her eyes, nose, and cheeks just barely visible to him. He noticed her brows twitch and strain with concentration, and then she blinked a few times... and then raised her eyes upwards to meet his.

She stared back at him for what felt like eternity to him. And then-

“What?” she asked, tilting her head. “Is something wrong? I'm not hurting you, am I?”

“I just noticed that you had blue eyes,” he said, feeling light-headed and foggy. He hadn't meant to say it out loud to her but his sense of what was internal and external was very hard to figure out with everything his body was going through. He was tremendously exhausted and confused.

“Ever since the day I was born,” she slightly smirked, unsure if he was trying to give her a compliment or sleep-deprived like she was and without his usual filter. She tried not to gag at the dark, scabbed over hole in front of her face and looked back up at Leon as she reached for the new ripped towel strips nearby. “Sorry, my stomach just feels really weak right now.”

Leon wasn't bothered by it and instead tried to offer her a small smile back to ensure her that she wasn't offending him. She breathed in slowly through her nostrils and began the process of re-wrapping his wound, winding the strips of cloth around his upper arm and slowly moving inward toward his upper chest. As she worked on fixing him up, Leon looked over at her again, hazily mesmerized by the swaying of the loose strands of hair falling from her messy ponytail. Some strands clung to her skin, several matted against the nape of her neck.

In his feverish state, Leon wanted to reach out and move them; he wanted to tuck them back into place or feel how soft her hair was.

“Shit,” Claire half-whispered. Leon's attention cut back to her words and he thanked whatever forces watching over him that he hadn't acted on his thoughts and made things weird. His mouth was dry and he stitched his brows at her audible roadblock as if to say “ _what?_ ” back to her. “... I... need to get underneath your shirt. What's left of it, anyway,” she gestured, not quite touching the ripped once-white fabric hanging over his upper shoulder.

“R-right,” Leon said back, his voice finally working again. His fingers found their way to the hem of his shirt, and he began to pull upward, but Claire's hands came into view and stopped him midway, instead taking his place. “I can do it,” he claimed, feeling a bit frustrated that he couldn't even do a simple task like taking off his own shirt.

“I know you can,” she said, raising and rolling the fabric up and over his torso and back, “but I don't want you to ruin these bandages.”

She bunched the fabric over his head and Leon voluntarily lifted his good arm to help with the removal. Finally, Claire gently took care to keep the shirt away from her handiwork around his shoulder and held the armhole, along with the rest of the fabric, away from his arm as she moved it down, thinking to herself that she was playing a twisted game of Operation. _No clown nose buzzer this time_ , she thought to herself. _Just Leon possibly bleeding out. No big deal. No pressure._

She cast the shirt off to the floor alongside the bandage scraps and picked up a fresh towel strip to continue her dressing of Leon's wound. When she turned around to get back to work, she couldn't help but take a glance at the rest of his body.

His body was toned. The first thing she noticed were his abs- _he had abs_. Claire's eyes lingered on them a little too long, noticing the slightest hint of hair right at the bottom of them, trailing down into his belt line, and below his waist where she couldn't see. An immense wave of guilt crashed into her when she realized how she was ogling him while he was weak and injured. She then felt even worse when her attention was pulled away from unchaste thoughts and drawn to the scattering of bruises and marks all over his body. He'd taken the beating of a lifetime alongside the bullet wound he'd been given by Annette Birkin.

“Oh god,” she said, not meaning to mutter it aloud. It was too late though and Leon had heard her audible distress.

“Not a pretty sight, huh?” he replied, as if he had been prepared for her reaction. Back when they had been at the motel and he'd taken a brief bath, he'd had to go through the same thing. He remembered struggling briefly to get out of his clothing and how he'd stared into the mirror and hardly recognized his battered body from the one he'd woken up with only a day before. He looked down at his fragile form and desperately tried to remember how it was normally supposed to look.

“I'm sorry,” Claire muttered quickly, focusing back on patching him up and working faster this time, with shakier fingers. She felt as if she'd trespassed and been caught and had no excuse.

“I can hardly feel it,” Leon lied, trying to soften Claire's extreme display of concern plastered all over her face tightly. And then when she didn't seem to laugh, he even added on, “At least they were nice enough to leave my face alone.”

That comment forced a tiny curl from her lips and she shook her head, mumbling something under her breath that sounded like “ _idiot_ ” and she resumed her work on the bandage. A minute or two passed by and Leon felt her hands glide and tug and tuck around parts of his shoulder and upper chest and he wasn't bothered or fazed by the closeness of her proximity. He'd gotten used to it and when she was finished, she slid away and gave him a once over, checking her work for mistakes. Then she patted her hand around the wound up bandages, checking they were sturdy.

“Voila,” she said, letting out a small sigh of relief. Her fingers were covered in dried blood and at some point she must have wiped sweat from her brow because Leon noticed a small red smudge on her forehead. As Claire went to grab his shirt to put it back on for him, Leon impulsively reached out, pointing at her head.

“You've got...” he began to say, but instead of finishing, he leaned forward, letting his thumb touch her skin and brush over the blood smudge, wiping it clean. She stayed still and waited until his hand fell away to silently give his shirt back to him. Claire felt her cheeks burn a bit red at the contact out of nowhere, embarrassed that something as simple as that was making her feel so flustered. She hid her face from Leon's view and rose from the ground, gathering the old bandage rags littering the floor and throwing them into the corner of the cell where the odor of old rusty blood wouldn't sting their nostrils as much.

Leon managed to get his shirt back on by himself, haphazardly pulling his bad arm through the armhole first and then managing to wrestle his head and other arm through after through several ungraceful motions.

After disposing of the rags, Claire stood in place, rubbing her thighs through her ruined and ripped jeans vigorously, trying to pump circulation back into her tired and sore limbs. Her feet were crying out from within her worn boots and she was scared to eventually see how battered they had become when she was finally able to rest.

“We have to get out of here. We have to get someone's attention,” she finally said, mostly in the hopes that speaking it would help make it more solid, more obtainable. Leon scooted back weakly, until he met the wall of the cell and it could support his body into a more comfortable sitting position. He watched as Claire wrapped her hands around the bars of the cell door and pressed her face into the gap between.

She could just barely see down the ominous looking hall and caught one or two shadows of figures pass by. Then, as if by chance, a graying, sinister looking man with wire-framed spectacles turned down into the hall, dressed in military garb, escorted and flanked by soldiers, and headed in her direction.

Her eyes widened and she stepped back, nearly tripping over her own feet and she turned to Leon.

“Someone's coming,” she alerted him in hushed tones, her body tensing up and defensively standing guard in the center of the cell as she wondered what had taken them so long and what they were going to do with them. Leon's stomach churned and he desperately wished he still had his Matilda in case anything went sour.

Finally, the entourage stopped in front of the cell, blocking the light from pouring in and casting bold, menacing shadows on to the floor before them. Claire grit her teeth and clenched her fists until she could physically feel her knuckles turning white hot.

"Open it," the man's stern voice commanded and one of the soldiers stepped forward and mechanically inserted a key, twisting their hand in one swift motion and sliding open the bars. The uniformed man stepped inside, joined by one of the soldiers, keeping one standing to the side of the door, watching out into the hall. Claire gulped as the cell suddenly felt smaller than before and more claustrophobic. The soldier in the cell drifted over in Leon's direction, eyeing him through a goggled gas mask helmet with opaque lenses, keeping their hands rested on the rifle at their side.

A bead of sweat ran down Leon's temple and across his cheek, finally bending around the bottom of his jaw. It turned cold as it reached his neck. The soldier only stared at him and didn't make a sound.

"You're Claire Redfield," the uniformed man said, circling around her. Hearing him speak her name sent chills down her spine and she worried about how he already knew who she was. Apparently, this amused the man since he gave a sneering chuckle at her reaction. "I didn't expect another Redfield to get mixed up in our business again."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Claire snapped back, suddenly feeling as if reality was bending and breaking and she couldn't keep hold of it.

"You really don't know?" The man said, smiling like a Cheshire cat at her response. "You mean to tell me that your brother didn't send you here? That you knew nothing about the Spencer Mansion incident?"

She shook her head, trying to process the words that the man was saying. _Spencer Mansion incident? What the hell did you get mixed up in, Chris_ , she thought, hoping that she wasn't about to hear of his untimely death. Instead, the man simply scoffed at her reply and turned toward the soldier at Leon's side.

With a simple gesture of his forefingers, the soldier grabbed Leon by the cloth of his shirt and hoisted him up, trying to pull him up and on to his feet. Leon barely managed to stay stable on his feet and the soldier pushed him against the wall and pressed the barrel of his rifle against Leon's side, keeping him pinned in place. Claire began to freak out, and almost threw herself over at the soldier to stop the whole thing before another soldier entered the cell and grabbed her shoulders to keep her firmly planted in place. She shook and tried as much as she could to get out of the soldier's grip but her body was too weak and tired from the lack of sleep.

All she could do was look on as Leon stared back at her with a fearful glance of his own.

"Now," the uniformed man began again, stepping in front of Claire, blocking her view of Leon and getting uncomfortably close to her, peering into her eyes with steely gray ones of his own. "I'm going to ask one more time. You came here, of your own accord, and just happened to get mixed up in all of this? Completely by mistake?"

Claire nodded slowly at first and then growled back, "Yes, _you asshole._  I have no idea where Chris is. I came to Raccoon to look for him."

The man tilted a brow upward, curiously and then pulled away from her proximity, giving her a bit more breathing room. Her glare stayed feral and vicious, waiting for a moment to fight back, if she would be given one.

"So your brother doesn't know you're here?" He seemed pleased at that revelation. Claire didn't like that at all. "How tragic."

For a brief moment, Claire felt the soldier's grip on her loosen and some animal instinct drove her to impulsively jerk out of their grasp and in the direction of the uniformed man. She nearly made contact with him and saw his eyes widen in shock until the soldier reacted quickly and slammed the butt of their rifle into the back of her head, knocking her on to the ground, writhing and hissing in pain. The soldier then aimed its gun at her, the safety clicking off and their finger hovering right over the trigger.

"Leave her alone!" Leon yelled out, finally finding his strength again. "You want information on Raccoon? I'll tell you whatever you want to know, just-" he coughed, his breath running out mid-sentence. The man in the uniform held out his hand to the soldier, signaling for them to pull the gun away from Claire, who had already began to lose consciousness, lying prone on the ground and succumbing to fatigue.

Leon swallowed hard and felt the gun against him push deeper into his skin. "Just leave her alone."

"And you," the man said, stepping around Claire's body and walking over to Leon. "Who are you?" From behind his square spectacles he looked over at Claire and then back to him, trying to piece together the narrative. "Are you two...?"

"Leon S. Kennedy. I'm a police officer from Raccoon." Leon glanced worriedly down at Claire across the room. He then shook his head. "I met her in the city. We escaped together. Nothing more."

"It doesn't seem like you're in any condition to make bargains," the man looked Leon over, seeing how frail he was, just barely able to stay upright on two shaking legs. "If I kill her, what will you do? Bleed on me?"

Leon's face began to burn red with rage and thoughts of decking the man square in the jaw began to clutter his mind as he tried to stay in control and choose his words carefully. "I'm not making any threats. I'm not going to try anything stupid. I just want to get out of here alive... _with her_."

A beat passed between the two men as the spectacled leader kept his glare trained on Leon's face.

"I'm not going to kill her," the man finally said, backing away and turning his attention towards the cell door and away from Leon's eyes. "We got what we needed. We just had to make sure there weren't any loose ends."

Leon's heart skipped a beat. _Sherry. They wanted Sherry._

Before anyone in the cell could say another word, a rumbling began to shake the ground. The soldiers snapped their masks in the direction of their leader and seemed to be receiving information in radios that Leon couldn't clearly make out. The spectacled man gave a " _hmmph_ " and shook his head. His expression looked disappointed.

"I assumed as much," the man spoke to the soldier at the door. Then, he turned to Leon one last time. "We'll finish this conversation later. Something's come up."

The soldier holding a gun to Leon eased off and rejoined the others at the door. Then, they slammed the cell door back into place and locked it up with a loud click. The entourage tread away, their boots rhythmically trotting back down the hall until Leon couldn't hear them over the shaking of the cell's walls.

"Claire!" He called out, hunching over after the strain put on his limbs and barely making it over to Claire's sleeping form on the ground. He collapsed at her side and tried to turn her over, only able to use one arm and failing miserably.

The rumbling turned into a full rolling tremor and then, out of nowhere, he heard a terrible sound-

 _Destruction_. Cracking, popping, explosive sounds coming from the sky. With every thunderous strike, the ground violently responded, shaking Claire's body along with it. Dust fell from the ceiling and landed on Leon's shoulders, camouflaged with the sweat and blood and dirt stains that already lingered in the fabric.

"They really did it," he whispered, slack-jawed, thinking back to Ada. They had really leveled Raccoon City to the ground. Leon was glad he couldn't witness the destruction first-hand. _So many lives needlessly lost..._

Leon weakly held on to Claire as the missiles rained down, miles away.

When they finally stopped, Leon had lost consciousness too.


End file.
